Dental anxiety in Medical and Dental undergraduates at Jazan University.

Aim: This study was to evaluate dental anxiety levels among undergraduate dental and medical students enrolled at Jazan University. Methods: Students enrolled in the second, third and fourth year of College of Dentistry and college of Medicine were included in the study. The five points modified Corah's Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) was used as the questionnaire. Descriptive analysis was done as well as Fisher's Exact Test and the Independent-t test to compare the anxiety scores between groups. Results: Two hundred and thirty three completed questionnaires were included in the study. Results showed that students were anxious mostly about tooth drilling and local anesthetic injection. For total anxiety scores (TAS), 37% of respondents scored ≥15 (Highly anxious) and 10.6% scored ≥19 (phobic). The mean MDAS scores for males were comparatively higher than females. Males showed significantly higher anxiety levels for tooth drilling than females (P = 0.013). Conclusion: Lack of adequate oral health education might have resulted in a high level of dental anxiety among students in Jazan University. Studies are required to identify and correlate dental anxiety with gender, age, level of study, and different stream of study among university students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]