Animal-Assisted Therapy- A Potential Tool for Management of Dental Anxiety in Children: A Questionnaire-based Cross-sectional Study

Introduction: Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) is being developed as an alternative approach to reduce the anxiety and comfort the apprehensive patients. Hence, to evaluate the child’s and parental acceptance of pets in dental operatory, their favourite pet, child’s choice of live pet over soft toy, their preference of own pet vs therapy, more hairy pets vs less hairy pets, play area vs child’s lap, the present study is undertaken.

Aim: To evaluate the influence of pets in reducing anxiety of children in the dental operatory and acceptance of this technique by the children and the parents.

Materials and Methods: This questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 65 children of age group 3-12 years and their parents who attended the Department of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, GITAM Dental college and Hospital, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India for a period of two weeks in the month of July 2018. They were assessed for anxiety and the influence of pets on anxiety levels using questionnaire and picture cards. The data was statistically analysed using Chi-square test.

Results: An 83.3% of parents and 75.4% of children felt that pets in the dental operatory are useful in reducing the anxiety. A 58.5% of children preferred live pets whereas only 33.3% parents preferred them. Dog was found to be the most favourite pet for very young children (31.6%) whereas older children preferred rabbit (43.5%).

Conclusion: Animal-assisted therapy was found to be useful in reducing the anxiety of children during dental visit.