Document Type : Original Articles

Abstract

Managing the anxiety of pediatric dental patient has long been important for dentists over many years and various techniques have been used with moderate and variant success rates over last few years. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether distraction induced by video glasses had an effect on the child’s   anxiety during dental treatment. Method and materials: Twenty six children between the ages of 5 to 7 had two visits each involving restorative dentistry with local of anesthesia inferior alveolar block. Thirteen children wore video glasses at their first restorative visit(case group) and not the second(control group), and thirteen children wore video glasses at the second restorative visit(case group) and not the first(control group). Child anxiety level in each visit was assessed using a combination of two measures :saliva cortisol and pulse rate. data were analyzed by T.test at a siginificance level of 0.05. Result: There was no statistically difference among two groups across saliva cortisol (p=0.625) and pulse rate (p=0.636) Discussion: As each person has limited capacity of attention, if greater part of this attention can be caught by a distraction task, it will less be devoted to pain perception or any other anxiety provoking situation so the anxiety will decrease. in this study audiovisual distraction using video glasses couldn’t decrease anxiety to a significant level. In conclusion, it seems video glasses during dental treatment had no significant effect on patient's anxiety however patients did enjoy wearing video glasses during dental treatment. Key word: Saliva Cortisol , Pulse Rate , Audiovisual Distraction, Anxiety