[A PhD completed 8. Are extreme dental treatment anxiety, fainting or gagging separate or overlapping phenomena?]

Abstract

Extreme dental treatment anxiety, fainting or gagging in the dentist's chair can seriously hinder a patient's dental treatment. While a series of widely diverse studies on extreme dental treatment anxiety have been carried out, less is known about gagging and fainting. The most important questions in this dissertation research were whether dental treatment anxiety ('stimuli') can be identified and whether dental treatment anxiety and fainting or gagging are separate or overlapping phenomena. Fear of dental treatment can be divided into several subtypes: fear of invasive treatments, loss of control and aversive physical sensations. The current level of dental anxiety is closely related to various characteristics of memories underlying this fear. A combination of fainting in the dental setting and extreme fear of the dental treatment affects only a small part of the respondents (17.8%). The same applies to gagging and extreme fear of dental treatment (16.4%). Based on these findings, the conclusion can be drawn that severe forms of dental treatment anxiety, fainting or gagging in the dental setting are largely unrelated phenomena.