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Hally J, Freeman R et al. Patient Educ Couns 2017; doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2017.05.005

Dentists are increasingly quantifying the level of anxiety for their patients using the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS). This paper summarises the findings from three distinct but linked studies that investigated the role that assessment of dental anxiety has in the care of patients undergoing dental treatment. This abstract will only report on Study 3. In this, carried out with 53 dentally anxious patients, anxiety was quantified from videotapes of dentist/patient interactions and physiological measures (heart rate). The two experimental arms were 1) patients completing the MDAS and handing the questionnaire sheet directly to the dentist, and 2) the control arm when patients completed the MDAS but gave the sheet to the receptionist, but blind to the dentist. The investigators reported anxiety levels 'immediately following the dental visit were not significantly different between the arms of the study'. However, a key finding was that if the dentist acknowledged the patient's dental anxiety in the first two minutes of the consultation, this had an effect of reducing dental anxiety in their patients at three-month follow-up. The authors of this paper and abstractor were both friends and colleagues of the first author of this paper, Dr Jenny Hally, now so sadly deceased. Study 3 was carried out by Jenny as part fulfilment for her PhD.