The Relationship Between Dental Trauma, Anxiety and Aggression Behavior in 7 to14 Year old Children in Kosovo.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Dental fear has a negative impact on the treatment outcomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate dental anxiety among children with different measurement scales, with the aim of getting more precise and thorough estimations, as well as correlation between anxiety scale and aggression scale in children with/or without dental trauma.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study population include 254 children's experience with dental trauma (59.1% male), and 251 children without dental trauma (46.6% male), between 7 and 14 years old, and their respective parents were evaluated during 2015-2016. Psychometric measures used for this purpose included several questionnaires. The result was tested with the X2 test, Student's t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson's correlation coefficient. The Cronbach alpha was used to check the reliability and validity of the measures. The predetermined significance levels were set at 0.05.

RESULTS: All used test has satisfactory reliability and validity of the scale. The mean anxiety score was significantly higher in children with dental trauma. The children with dental trauma had a higher mean aggression scale (OAS). The girls had significantly higher mean anxiety score than boys in all used questionnaires. The mean aggression score was significantly higher for boys than girls in both compared groups (p<0.001). The Odds of the aggressive behavior in children with dental trauma decrease for 0.95 when the value of the mean DVSS-SV scale is increased by one units, and increase for 1.04 when the means anxiety score increased by one units.

CONCLUSION: The mean anxiety score was significantly higher in children with dental trauma, as well as the girls and children who are more afraid of medical interventions (CMFQ). Also the children with dental trauma, and boys had a higher mean aggression scale (OAS).
Significant correlation was found between dental anxiety level and aggressive behavior of children's. The odds of the aggressive behavior increased with increasing of mean score of each anxiety measurement scale, but not significantly, except for S-DAI score.