International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | June 2020 | Vol 7 | Issue 6 Page 2230 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Singh I et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2020 Jun;7(6):2230-2232 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Evaluation of the factors related to dental anxiety in North Indian population: a questionnaire study Iqbal Singh 1 , Nitish Bhat 2 , Robindera Kaur 3 , Kalpna Thakur 4 , Hemwati Nandan 5 , Nandini Bhardwaj 6 * INTRODUCTION Dental anxiety is one of the most common known reasons for lack of proper oral care. It is basically the fear related to the dental treatment termed as “Odontophobia” which keeps people away from thedental clinics. 1 The result of dental anxiety not only leads to delay in the dental treatment but also impacts the behaviour of the patients towards the treatment resulting in worsening of the oral health of the patient. 2 Anxiety towards the dental treatment does not depend on single factor but is known to be multifactorial where a lot of factors are responsible for inducing the anxiety towards the dental treatment. Some of the factors which are known to be associated to the dental anxiety include the age gender and past experiences on the dental chair. So in this study we designed a questionnaire to find out the relation of some of the factors with dental anxiety in the North Indian ABSTRACT Background: To evaluate the factors affecting dental anxiety level on the basis of a questionnaire in the North Indian Population. Methods: A questionnaire based on the various factors related to dental anxiety was formulated and distributed among the various regions of the north India. We got response from 250 people, the data was then analysed and results were formulated. Results: Out of 450 questionnaires which were distributed, a total of 400 questionnaires were received. Overall high prevalence of dental anxiety i.e. 85% was noted. More increased values for anxiety were seen for people younger than 30 years (70%), compare to that of elder people (30%). Females seem to have greater anxiety levels as compared to males (p value >0.000). Among 450 people 176 had visited clinics previously with 98 having bad experience (55.6%) and 78 people having a relatively good past dental experience (44.2%). Conclusions: Anxious patients are often more difficult to treat, therefore the questionnaire proved beneficial in estimating factors related to dental anxiety. Young people, women and those having negative dental experience had the highest anxiety levels. Keywords: Anxious patients, Dental anxiety, Odontophobia 1 Department of Public Health Dentistry, Indira Gandhi Government Dental College, Jammu, India 2 Department of Oral Pathology, Indira Gandhi Government Dental College, Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India 3 Department of Surgery, Sarwal Government Hospital, Jammu, India 4 Department of Oral Pathology, Microbiology HP Dental College and Hospital, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India 5 Department of Dentistry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India 6 Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Microbiology and Forensic Odontology, Himachal Institute of Dental Sciences, Sirmour, Himachal Pradesh, India Received: 29 February 2020 Revised: 10 May 2020 Accepted: 11 May 2020 *Correspondence: Dr. Nandini Bhardwaj, E-mail: nandinibhardwaj313@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20202476