Nivel de ansiedad en pacientes que acuden a consulta odontológica de cirugía y periodoncia en la Facultad de Odontología de la Universidad de Los Andes

Abstract

In dental literature is common to talk of trait anxiety and state anxiety; the former has to do with the personality of the individual whereas the latter is a transient emotional state of the human organism. The aim of the present study was to compare the level of anxiety in patients attending a dental appointment in the departments of surgery and periodontics at the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Los Andes. For that purpose, comparative epidemiological study with a transversal design of case in free environment was performed. The sample consisted of 40 male and female adult patients of the chairs of surgery and periodontics. For data collection two instruments were applied simultaneously, namely, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Short Version Dental Anxiety Scale (SDAI). According to the categorization by gender and age, patients with higher levels of anxiety according to gender are women, and to age are the patients ranging between 38 and 45 years, in contrast to younger patients who present lower levels of anxiety. Regarding chisquare tests, it can be noted that the p-value obtained from the instrument applied for statetrait and dental anxiety compared to the chair of surgery and periodontics was more than 0.05; based on that, we can say that we found no statistically significant dependence between variables, which leads us to reject the alternative hypothesis (hi) and accept the null hypothesis (h0).