When it comes to dental care, the population to provider ratio should be at least 5,000 to 1 (4,000 to 1 if there are unusually high needs in the community). Financial difficulties, geographical location, lack of insurance, poor oral health knowledge, language, educational, or cultural barriers. For adult patients, barriers include dental anxiety, financial costs of dental treatment, perceived dental need, and lack of access. For younger children, their barriers to dental care will be affected by parents' attitudes and anxiety.
For preteens and adolescents, dental care and compliance with preventive advice will depend on their stage of psychological development. Regardless of the category of barrier to accessing dental care, it is up to the dental health professional to recognize that there are barriers and, within the effort of two people, which is the interaction between the dentist and the patient, to help their patients access and accept dental health care. Honkala, “Parents' perceptions of dental visits and access to dental care among disabled schoolchildren in Kuwait,” Odonto-Stomatologie Tropicale, vol. Patients considered that cost was a factor that prevented them from accessing dental care at dental clinics.
Children's dental anxiety assessments include pictorial representations (9) of the dental situation, in addition to asking the child how they feel about the elements of dental treatment, such as the injection or the drill. The use of psychological questionnaires such as the Dental Anxiety Scale8 or the modified Dental Anxiety Scale9 can be useful in identifying these people. With the growing global awareness of the importance of oral health among the public and dental health professionals, one would expect that there would be almost universal access to dental services in Saudi Arabia. The barriers that emerged included the dentist's lack of preparation to help people with disabilities, structural problems with access to dental offices, communication difficulties, and lack of awareness about the need for dental treatment for the disabled person.
This proportion is similar to the 46.2% recorded by Al-Shehri as the proportion of people who had had difficulty receiving dental care for people with special medical care needs, and up to 55% of them had unmet dental needs. In addition, deliberate measures need to be taken to address other obstacles, such as improving the training of dental professionals and investments in equipment and other physical infrastructure to support dental care for people with disabilities. Girdler, “Access to Dental Care: Parents' and Caregivers' Views on Dental Treatment Services for People with Disabilities,” Special Care in Dentistry, Vol. Although the dental staff were not directly asked as part of the study, many of the caregivers indicated that some of the dental staff at the dental centers they visited did not know how to care for people with special health care needs or did they have the appropriate infrastructure to serve this special clientele.
Ikeda, “Dental treatment for physically or mentally disabled patients under general anesthesia at the Suidobashi Hospital of the Tokyo School of Dentistry,” The Bulletin of Tokyo Dental College, vol. In this way, the dentist will be able to help patients with dental anxiety or dental phobia access dental health care. By the time adolescents15, psychosocial factors such as parents' attendance at the dentist, gender and educational aspirations seem to have positive and negative effects, since they can increase or decrease adolescents' awareness of their dental health needs. Considering the importance of dental care for the general health of people with special health care needs, it is necessary to include dental care as a standard component of comprehensive care for these individuals.
Prior knowledge of children with dental anxiety can help the dentist improve dental treatment experiences, thus reducing the potency of dental anxiety as a barrier to accessing dental care. . .
