Anxiety, pain and type of dental procedure

The anxiety, pain expected and pain experienced of patients arriving for their scheduled dental appointments were measured. The amount of pain expected and experienced was found to be related to the type of dental procedure. Highly anxious patients expected more pain than they experienced when they received drilling/extraction type procedures but the discrepancy was small when they were due to receive a check-up. Low-anxiety patients, by contrast, accurately predicted the amount of pain they would experience, whatever the procedure. The results may explain why anxiety about dentistry is slow to extinguish.