An observational study in Dental Anxiety and Dental Fear, sponsored by Marmara University. Completed at 1 site in Turkey (Türkiye). Open to participants aged 2 Years to 13 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-10-20.
Sponsored by Marmara University · Observational
The goal of this observational study is to learn whether children who come to a pediatric dental emergency clinic have higher dental anxiety than children who come for routine dental care. The study includes children aged 2 to 13 years attending the Department of Pediatric Dentistry at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkiye.
The main question it aims to answer is: Do children attending an emergency dental visit (because of dental pain, abscess, facial swelling, or dental trauma) have higher dental anxiety scores than children attending a routine dental visit?
Researchers will also look at whether dental anxiety is related to age, sex, previous dental visits, previous local anesthesia, and tooth decay experience.
Participants will:
No extra treatment or intervention is given as part of this study.
Dental fear and anxiety are common in children and are a major barrier to dental care. Dental pain and traumatic dental injuries are the leading reasons for emergency dental visits in children, but few studies have directly compared dental anxiety between children attending emergency and routine dental care.
This single-center, cross-sectional pilot study was conducted at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Marmara University Faculty of Dentistry. Children were allocated to two groups according to the type of visit: (1) Emergency group: children presenting to the pediatric emergency dental clinic with pain due to acute apical abscess, facial swelling, dental trauma, or similar urgent conditions; (2) Routine group: children presenting for routine examination or treatment without dental pain, trauma, or acute infection.
After written informed consent was obtained from parents or legal guardians, parents completed a questionnaire on demographic characteristics and dental history (previous dental visits, previous treatments, pain experience, local anesthesia or sedation history). Caries experience was recorded using the WHO dmft/DMFT index. Dental anxiety was measured with the Turkish version of the Corah Dental Anxiety Scale (C-DAS; 4 items, total score 4-20).
Statistical analysis was performed with IBM SPSS Statistics v24. Normality was assessed with the Shapiro-Wilk test; group comparisons used the independent samples t-test or Mann-Whitney U test, and categorical variables were compared with the Chi-square test. Correlations were evaluated with Pearson or Spearman analyses. Statistical significance was set at p\<0.05.
The original protocol planned to include 106 participants; 47 children were enrolled during the data collection period, and the study was therefore reported as a pilot study.
1,137 studies on the registry are indexed under Dental Caries; 201 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 47 is below the median of 178 across 185 observational studies indexed under Dental Caries.
Browse Dental Caries studies →Marmara University is the lead sponsor of 589 studies on the registry; 136 are open to participants now.
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Children aged 2-13 years attending the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Marmara University Faculty of Dentistry, Istanbul, Turkiye, either at the pediatric emergency dental clinic (dental pain, acute apical abscess, facial swelling, or dental trauma) or at the routine pediatric dental clinic, enrolled consecutively during the study period.
Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.
Exclusion Criteria:
Children aged 2-13 years presenting to the pediatric emergency dental clinic with dental pain due to acute apical abscess, facial swelling, dental trauma, or similar urgent conditions, attending the faculty for the first time.
Children aged 2-13 years presenting to the pediatric dentistry clinic for routine examination or treatment, with or without prior dental experience, and without dental pain, trauma, or acute infection at the time of admission.
Dental Anxiety Score (Corah Dental Anxiety Scale)
Dental anxiety was assessed using the Turkish version of the Corah Dental Anxiety Scale (C-DAS), a 4-item questionnaire with each item scored from 1 to 5. Total scores range from 4 to 20, with higher scores indicating greater dental anxiety. Mean C-DAS scores were compared between the emergency and routine dental care groups.
Time frame: Day 1 (before clinical examination)
Distribution of Dental Anxiety Categories
Participants were categorized according to total C-DAS score (not anxious: 0-4, low anxiety: 5-8, moderate anxiety: 9-12, high anxiety: 13-14, extreme anxiety/phobia: 15-20). The proportion of participants in each category was compared between groups.
Time frame: Day 1 (before clinical examination)
Caries Experience (dmft/DMFT Index)
Caries experience was recorded by clinical examination using the WHO dmft/DMFT index (number of decayed, missing, and filled primary/permanent teeth). Higher scores indicate greater caries experience.
Time frame: Day 1 (at clinical examination)
Plan to share: No — Individual participant data will not be shared publicly because participants are minors and the informed consent obtained from parents/legal guardians did not include data sharing. Aggregated data are reported in the publication; anonymized data may be made available by the corresponding author upon reasonable request and with ethics committee approval.
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
From the registry record's own update history. This site started tracking changes on Sep 25, 2026; for anything earlier, see the record history on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
This study is completed, as verified in Oct 2026. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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