Evaluation of the experiences of fearful children at a Special Dental Care Centre.

A representative sample of parents was interviewed one to two years after their children had been treated at a Dutch Special Dental Care Centre (SBT). Information was sought about the children's current behavior during visits to family dentists. Within one to two years after the experiences at SBT more than 90 percent of the children visited a family dentist, 60 percent of them required restorative treatment and 80 percent of this treatment was performed, using local anesthesia. Retrospectively, the parents report a decrease of their children's dental anxiety, when leaving the SBT. This level of anxiety is unchanged after one to two years visiting a family dentist. For the children there was a significant relationship between dental anxiety as reported by the parents and not visiting a family dentist. Results suggest that referring dentists arrange the initial treatment at the Special Dental Care Centre and that the children in this group referred for dental anxiety belong to a caries-risk group.