A novel Chotta Bheem–Chutki scale for dental anxiety determination in children

OBJECTIVE: A potential problem in patient management in pediatric dentistry is dental anxiety among children. It is of paramount importance for pediatric dentists to identify an anxious child and review potential management options specific to every child. The aim of this study is to validate a newly devised Chotta Bheem–Chutki (CBC) pictorial scale and to compare this with Venham's pictorial scale (VPS) and facial image scale (FIS) to measure dental anxiety in young children during their first dental visit. MATERIALS AND METHODS: One hundred children aged 4–12 years were randomly selected from our hospital outpatient department. Child's anxiety levels were measured using three different scales; the VPS, FIS, and the newly devised CBC pictorial scale. The scores were recorded by asking the children to choose the figure they identified with at that instant. The scores obtained from all the three scales were compared using student's t-test. Pearson correlation test was used to obtain correlation among the scales used in the study. RESULTS: A strong correlation (0.778) was found between FIS and CBC scale. Moreover, a strong correlation (0.811) was found between VPS and CBC scale, indicating good validity of the CBC scale. Seventy five percent of the children found CBC scale to be the easiest among the three scales. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggest that CBC scale can be used as a new tool for dental anxiety assessment in children.