Research Article Dental Phobia among Pregnant Women: Considerations for Healthcare Professionals Muhammad Nazir and Muhanad Alhareky Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia Correspondence should be addressed to Muhammad Nazir; manazir@iau.edu.sa Received 2 February 2020; Accepted 23 March 2020; Published 10 April 2020 Academic Editor: Alessandro Leite Cavalcanti Copyright © 2020 Muhammad Nazir and Muhanad Alhareky. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. To report the prevalence of dental phobia and associated factors among pregnant women. MaterialsandMethods.is cross-sectional study included pregnant women visiting hospitals in Dhahran, Khobar, and Dammam in Saudi Arabia. e ModifiedDentalAnxietyScale(MDAS)wasusedtoassessdentalanxietyandphobia.escoreofMDASrangesfrom5to25,and a cutoff value of 19 was used to identify participants with dental phobia. Results. e study analyzed data of 825 participants with mean age of 29.08 ± 5.18 years. e prevalence of dental phobia was 16.1%. About 46.9% of the sample believed that dental treatment should be avoided during pregnancy, and the importance of regular dental checkup was recognized by 16.4% of the participants. Dental phobia was associated with the perception of the health of teeth (P 0.004) and gums (P 0.016). Multiple logistic regression showed that being under the age of 30 years (OR 0.63, P 0.019) and updating knowledge about oral health (OR 0.49, P 0.006) were significantly associated with reduced likelihood of dental phobia. However, having bad dental experience (OR 2.13, P 0.001) and being in first trimester of pregnancy (OR 1.57, P 0.033) were significantly associated with increased odds of dental phobia. Conclusions.Aconsiderableproportionofpregnantwomenreporteddentalphobia.ebaddentalexperiencewas associated with increased dental phobia. However, reduced likelihood of dental phobia was associated with updating oral health knowledge. Healthcare professionals may consider these factors to reduce dental phobia and improve oral health of pregnant women. 1. Introduction Pregnant women are at increased risk of gingivitis, peri- odontitis, tooth mobility, pregnancy oral tumor, caries, and enamel erosions [1, 2]. It is known that periodontal diseases are associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm delivery, low birth weight, and preeclampsia [3]. Periodontal diseases are also associated with diabetes, cor- onary heart disease, stroke, and rheumatoid arthritis [4]. Despite, there is a low utilization of oral care among pregnant women [5]. Microorganisms from the mother can colonize an infant’s oral cavity [6]. Hence, inadequate oral care during pregnancy can result in poor oral health out- comes for both the mother and infants [1]. erefore, dental care and preventive measures should be provided to pregnant women to reduce the risk of oral and systemic conditions for them and their newborns [1, 2]. Anxiety is an emotional state before the actual situation with threatening stimuli, and it may be undetectable at times. Fear is a reaction to a threat or danger, and phobia is an intense, persistent, or recurrent irrational fear that can lead to a compelling desire to avoid phobic stimuli [7]. Extreme fear of dental situation associated with uneasiness, terror, and hypertensive feelings is termed as dental phobia, a type of specific phobia, which is a clinical diagnosis as opposed to dental anxiety or fear although these terms are used interchangeably in the literature [7–9]. A large body of evidence indicates that the prevalence of dental phobia ranges from 0.9% to 12.4% in adult patients from the community or those visiting dental teaching Hindawi International Journal of Dentistry Volume 2020, Article ID 4156165, 7 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/4156165