Global prevalence of dental anxiety in adult population: a systematic review

Abstract

Background: Dental anxiety is a problem that impacts significantly in the oral health and dental compliance in adult. However, there is no enough clarity about the prevalence of this phenomenon in the global population. The objective of this study is determine the global prevalence of dental anxiety in adult population with a systematic review. Methods: The authors search PubMed, Scopus, Scielo and ISI Web of Science databases with no time limit on the search period, and review studies published in English, Spanish and Portuguese language. MeSh terms, key words and other free terms related to Dental Anxiety, Dental Fear, Dental Phobia, Odontophobia, Adults will be used with Boolean operators (OR, AND) to combine searches. Studies were included if the age of the sample was between 18 until 70 years old, used a quantitative dental anxiety scale and the type of the study was observational studies, including cross-sectional study designs and prospective study designs. The risk of bias was assessed using a critical appraisal tool (Risk of Bias Tool). Expected results: In process. Current Stage of Work: The project was accept by PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews (CRD42016033317). We are at the stage of retrieved information from database. Discussion: Knowing the levels of dental anxiety allow us to compare differences by country, year of study, sample size, study design, patient population studied, mean age of sample/age-range, gender of the population, age, sex and education level, identify the most used dental anxiety scales and hypothesize the causes of dental anxiety.