Dental treatment is a necessity for all of us. Nowadays, the fear and phobia of dental procedures are among the main reasons for neglecting dental health and the cause of different complications that doctors deal with on a daily basis. One of the main challenges and difficulties in our daily work is to fight this fear.

Dental phobia is a condition of pathological, obsessive, irrational fear of dental manipulations that causes a permanent negative emotion that occurs with each encounter in need of treatment. Unfortunately, dental phobia is an acquired condition. It is most often due to an old experience associated with pain or a negative feeling, humiliation or lack of sufficient information. No one likes to feel pain, no one likes the unknown, no one likes to be humiliated. It causes a condition in patients that they carry within themselves for a long time, and the more time passes without action, the more difficult it becomes to control.

There are other causes of dental phobia, but they are significantly less in percentage:

– congenital phobia, similar to congenital phobias of snakes, insects, etc.

– phobia caused by a story about the experience, told by relatives, friends and others.

Dental phobia is divided into three stages – anxiety, fear and true phobia. Anxiety is a normal condition for a large percentage of people. It is completely normal to worry about an upcoming dental treatment, a job interview, a loved one, an upcoming event. The fear is caused by past unpleasant experiences with a dentist. True phobia is a combination of the previous two conditions, but with a much stronger intensity. In the essence of everything, however, apart from an old experience, in our opinion, there is also a lack of information and fear of the unknown. It must be determined exactly to which category the patient belongs in order to offer him an appropriate treatment.

Before starting work and showing professional skills in dentistry, high quality and modern equipment, you need to create comfort for the patient by building a relationship with him. Fear is a very serious problem before any dental manipulation, so our team has different ways for coping with it:

• Create a good first impression in the first 7 seconds. We welcome the patient in a good and harmonious atmosphere of colors, aromas and sounds that create at least 1% calmness. Through a warm attitude, smile and gesture you can change the mood of everyone, even a stranger on the street.
• We spend enough time to talk to the patient and provide complete information about his condition, need for treatment and further In our busy daily lives as doctors, it is increasingly difficult to find free time for long consultations. We work at a fast pace, which is harmful to both us and our patients. The time we spend talking to the patient is very valuable to him. People are afraid because of the lack of information, the uncertainty of what is to come and the lack of understanding of our profession. The most normal attitude is to treat the patient as a person, not as a diagnosis. In our opinion, dental treatment is a mutual responsibility of the dentist and the patient. To make sure that it is taken responsibly – trust between the two sides is one of the main things that needs to be built. This is possible when the patient’s expectations are defined, it is clear what the fears and worries are and they are approached with the appropriate attitude. Our team spends at least 1 hour to talk to the patients, several times if necessary. If we doubt that the information may not be enough and the patient does not understand us, we invite and encourage him to ask questions, and we try to visualize in the best way how things will happen and to satisfy all senses, to reduce anxiety and treat acquired dental phobia and fear. We never start treatment on the first visit unless there is an emergency.
• Painless treatment. There are many ways to control pain, you can take the treatment more slowly and perform it in different visits. In the best case, the pain should be completely eliminated. Fear decreases when there is no pain. Fear disappears when there is no pain and there is well-presented information, when the patient’s condition is well explained by the doctor and the attitude towards him is humane.
• Modern equipment and working methods. Medicine and dentistry are advancing at a rapid pace. Our profession makes us keep learning our whole Every dentist who is up to date can offer even more predictable results, higher quality and more painless procedures, thanks to modern equipment and training.
• When working with children, especially if they are visiting a dentist for the first time, we try our best, even in case of emergency, to make sure that the child does not become afraid of us and of dental treatment in general. Depending on the age of the child, we apply different methods for painless and calm treatment – video, sound, stories, role-playing, in order not to cause fear.

Dental phobia is a condition that requires serious attention and attitude. We encourage all patients to share their concerns and fears with their dentists so that they can manage them in a timely manner. This would improve dental health as well as the health of our entire body.