Abstract: Objective To explore the neurophysiological responses of patients′ fear in real treatment scenarios, and to construct a assessment model of children′s dental fear and anxiety (DFA) based on physiological data. Methods Totally 166 children under the age of 14 who received treatment at the Beijing Children′s Hospital Department of Stomatology were included in the study. The Chinese version of the modified Children′s Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS) was used to assess dental fear and anxiety scores in children. A wrist-worn physiological data collection device was used to continuously measure subjects′ heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) during the treatment. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to test for differences in physiological data before, during and after treatment. Pearson′s correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationship between physiological data and CFSS-DS scores before, during, and after treatment. A Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator(LASSO) regression model was established to assess dental fear and anxiety among children, and Leave-One-Out (LOO) was used for cross-validation. Results There were significant differences in the changes of each dimension of physiological data before, during, and post treatment(P＜0.05). The Pearson′s correlation coefficient (r) between the LASSO model predictive values and the CFSS-DS scores was 0.30 (P＜0.05), which indicated a good predictive accuracy of the model. Conclusions The assessment model might achieve objective and automated measurement of dental fear and anxiety in children.

Key words: dental fear/anxiety, physiological measurement, heart rate, galvanic skin reaction