Introduction

Recently, fear as it relates to dental hygiene treatment has become an area of focus as researchers have begun to consider the patient's reaction to the dental hygienist.  De Jongh and Stouthard examined anxiety of patients in an Amsterdam (Netherlands) general health center and found that a majority of the participants reported feelings of anxiety during dental hygiene treatment.  The highest anxiety ratings were given to actual feelings of pain.¹¹  This finding concurs with that of Liddell et al. where individuals receiving dental treatment ranked pain as the greatest source of their dental anxiety.⁶  Individual's feelings of anxiety, prior to and following treatment, were greater in response to dental hygiene treatment than to dental treatment.  There was no interaction between anxiety level and gender.  Both men and women experienced similar reactions to dental hygiene treatment.  A study conducted by Gadbury-Amyot et al. examined dental hygiene fear utilizing a modification of the dental fears survey.¹²

The prevalence of fear in a dental hygiene patient population was comparable to that found for patients with dental fear.  This study found that 19.3% of the participants responded by indicating high dental hygiene fear values on the survey.  Tripp et al. examined dental hygiene patient's pain reports for routine clinical procedures during treatment.¹³  Approximately 25% of participants experienced pain ranging from moderate to severe for at least one dental hygiene procedure.  The highest pain ratings were reported for probing and manual/ultrasonic scaling procedures.