se of auriculotherapy to control anxiety in dental clinical practice

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of using auriculotherapy on anxiety control during clinical dental care. The research was carried out at the Dental School Clinic of the Centro Universitário do Leste de Minas Gerais, being divided into two phases: in the first, the initial assessment was carried out and the ear points established to control anxiety were carried out according to the principles of Medicine Traditional Chinese. The second phase took place one week after treatment and consisted of reassessing the individual's report on the impact of therapy on their anxiety. Sociodemographic information was collected and the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale was used to measure the participants' anxiety level. The assessment of the dental anxiety score was measured with principal component analysis (PCA), fixing only one component and Varimax rotation. For the effects of sociodemographic and health variables on dental anxiety scores, the GMM (Generalized Mixed Models) was adopted with linear distribution and identity link function. Initially, 184 individuals participated in the study, but 16 did not respond to the second part of the questionnaire. Thus, 168 individuals completed the methodological procedure. Data analyzes suggest statistical significance in the test application period (before and after) and lower reports of anxiety. Data from this study suggest that auriculotherapy is capable of controlling anxiety related to dental treatment.