The Effect of Waiting Room's Environment on the Levels of Anxiety Experienced by Children Prior Dental Treatment

The SADE waiting room: a small waiting room (2.5mx2.5m) inside the clinic with 6 seats. All ceiling fluorescent lighting is removed. The adapted lighting consisted of slow-moving, repetitive visual color effects created by a projector, and a lighting column that children can touch and climb on. Auditory stimuli include rhythmic music, which is heard via loudspeakers. The traditional waiting room: a waiting area outside the clinic with ten seats in one row faces the reception desk in an area of 15 square meters. The area is air-conditioned, moderately well-lit, without posters or paintings on the walls, and no reading material.

•Dental anxiety scale- Venham Picture Test (VPT) is widely used and easily administered. In this test, children are presented with eight cards, with two figures on each card, one 'anxious' figure and one 'nonanxious' figure. They are asked to choose the figure from each pair that describes how they feel at that particular time. All cards are shown in their numbered order. If an anxious figure is chosen, a score of one is recorded. If a nonanxious cartoon is chosen, a score of zero is recorded. A measure of anxiety is obtained by totaling the number of times the child picks the cartoons depicting the anxious state (minimum score, 0; maximum score, 8). The participants will be asked to answer while waiting in the waiting room just before entering the clinic.

Study design- The study is a parallel randomized trial. The participants will be randomly assigned to one type of waiting room.

Additional data- gender, age, the lengths of waiting, the purpose of the visit (examination or treatment with/without sedation), dental experience, type of waiting room, child escort.