Last Updated on July 17, 2022 at 8:39 pm
An online live talk show on dental anxiety was today organized by De9to, which is a health-technology platform for both patients and dentists. Dr Gautam Sharma (MDS) from the University of Jammu was the resource person for this talk show. Dr Gautam is also the former President of Indian Dental Association (IDA), Jammu. Anxiety is a thought and is an emotional state where a person suffers from the fear of unknown or fear that something bad will happen.
Dr.Gautam said that although anxiety is normally experienced in day-to-day life, such as students have it while going to school or during their examinations, adults experience it in their offices or while making some important decision, and also some feel it before the live performance on stage and so on, but anxiety before the treatment lead to delay in the timely treatment and therefore complicates the disease. Dr. Sharma told that dental anxiety is a frequently encountered problem in dental clinics esp. in children and females.
As there is reduced cooperation, therefore, treating an anxious patients is difficult for the dentist, , requiring more treatment time, and resulting in an unpleasant experience for both the patient and the dentist.
Dr.Gautam said that this fear and anxiety before the dental consultation is deep rooted as parents, peers, neighbors talk about the bleeding and pain encountered during the treatment and use of injections and sharp instruments during the therapy. Many videos on social media platforms are made by the people who are not dentists but talk about the dental treatment and advanced surgical modalities available in dentistry. He cautioned the public not to view such channels and videos as these increase the anxiety levels of the patient before actual treatment.
He stressed that new technologies like use of LASERS in dentistry have led to bloodless surgeries and minimal discomfort after the treatment. Dentistry is evolving very fast and these days painless dentistry is practiced throughout world. Computer-controlled local anesthetic delivery system is used for the patients who fear injections and are phobic to the needle. Atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) can be considered for the patients who are afraid of air-rotors or air-turbines.
He also advised parents to counsel their kids regarding the painless dentistry before bringing them to a dental clinic so that it would be easy for the dentist to administer the treatment as well as child would also be comfortable during the treatment. If parents scare their children that the tooth will be pulled out after an injection by the dentist then it will have an adverse effect on the psychology of the kid leading to phobia for the dental treatment.
Dr.Gautam also stressed that communication is most important aspect to control the dental anxiety. The communication should be two-way, the dentist should explain the treatment before initiating it and the patient must inform the dentist regarding the dental anxiety, so that the expert can resolve the patient’s issues.
Yash Bansal, founder and CEO of De9to informed that this talk show is available on the facebook page of De9to. The patients suffering from anxiety as well as the treating dentists can see the recording of this session on the FB page. He requested the dentists to visit the company’s website page as they provide digitizing and upscaling of dental clinics and collaborating with De9to gives the advantage of having a professional marketing and operations team.
Mohit Kapoor, Co-founder and CFO of De9to said that they will be organizing the live talk shows by the top and reputed dentists of the country in future too. Dr. Jaspreet Kaur, Dr. Saanika Bali, Dr. Tanya Batra and Dr. Charu Mundeja supported the talk show while Nandini Bhatia was anchor of the live session.
