The Pediatric patient
Dental treatment for children between 4 and 6 years of age in a dental office.
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| Wong-Baker Faces Pain Scale |
Dental treatment for children
The objective of this study is to evaluate whether pediatric patient distraction effectively reduces pain and anxiety, in addition to traditional strategies on the behavior of the minor patient during procedures in dentistry.
Pain and anxiety are unpleasant sensations associated with actual or potential trauma. Therefore, various management strategies have been proposed to reduce discomfort during dental treatment in children, which fall into two broad categories. The first consists of behavioral techniques, including Count-Show-Do, distraction, inspiration, modeling, and hypnosis.
The second category consists of pharmacological techniques. This single-blind, crossover clinical study has been conducted at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry in Tabriz, University of Medical Sciences.
The 120 participating children, aged between 4 and 6 years old, underwent dental treatment at the Department of Pediatrics and Dentistry in Tabriz from November 2011 to March 2012. Small patients with no history of anxiety disorders were randomly divided into two groups, each comprising 60 children. The study consisted of 3 consecutive sessions. During the first visit, both groups were given fluoride treatment. In the following sessions, the groups received restorative treatments, with and without virtual reality glasses, with single-blind randomized crossover study modes.
At the end of each session, the severity of the patient's pain was assessed using the Wong-Baker Faces Rating Scale (Figure 1). The anxiety state was measured using the Volti version of the Modify Anxiety Scale Child Dental (MCDAS).
The results obtained by the authors of this study demonstrate a significant decrease in pain perception (p < 0.001) and anxiety state (p < 0.001) with the use of virtual reality glasses (VR technique) during dental treatment in the tiniest patients.
