The effect of neuro feedback on children's anxiety in dentistry

Abstract

Background: dental anxiety in children is indicated as a problem in controlling the patients. The effect of this fear continues till adolescence and leads to prevention from dentist tasks which outcome is loss of mouth health. Therefore, the present study was carried out by the purpose of examining the effectiveness of neuro feedback on children dental anxiety. Materials and methods: the methodology of this study is semi-experimental. The statistical population of the research includes all the children in 9 to 12 years old referring to dentistry centers of Tabriz in 2017. They are selected through on random sampling as 26 people using the questionnaire of dentist anxiety and randomly assigned into two experimental (8 individuals) and control groups (8 individuals). The experimental group was under neuro feedback therapy for 5 weeks, in 3-30 min sessions a week and control group did not receive the same training as the intervention group. Data was analyzed by SPSS software and MANOVA. Results : Based on the research findings there is significant relationship between pretest scores and post-test's in two groups. The pre-test anxiety scores in both groups were close to 16 and after the treatment of neuro feedback, the mean anxiety of the experimental group was reduced to 9, but the mean anxiety level of the control group was 16, thus, the neuro feedback treatment reduced the dental anxiety of the children in the experimental group. Conclusion: These results indicates that this method, like other treatment and replacing techniques could be used to decrease children dental anxiety.