Overview
Many children feel anxious before dental treatment. This study compares two ways of helping children feel calmer while waiting for their dental visit: watching a dental story through virtual reality (VR) glasses, or listening to the same story read aloud by the dentist from a printed storybook. The story is in Arabic and follows a girl named Amira during her first dental visit. The story is identical in both groups, so the only difference is how it is delivered. Healthy children aged 6 to 10 years will be randomly assigned to one of the two groups. The main outcome is the child's heart rate, measured before and after the story as an objective sign of anxiety. Children's dental fear will also be assessed with two child-friendly scales, and parents' own dental anxiety will be measured to see whether it is related to their child's anxiety. The study aims to find out whether VR storytelling differs from a traditional storybook in its effect on children's anxiety before dental treatment.
Description
This is a randomized controlled trial with two parallel groups (1:1). A total of 108 children (54 per group) will be enrolled at King Abdulaziz University Dental Hospital, allowing for 20% attrition. Group assignment uses sealed envelopes drawn by the child after enrollment and baseline assessment. Group I watches the digital story in VR during the waiting period. Group II listens to the same story read aloud from the printed book. Heart rate, the Children's Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS), and the Facial Image Scale (FIS) are recorded before and after the intervention. Parental dental anxiety is measured with the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS), and caries experience with the dmft/DMFT indices. The dentist delivering the intervention cannot be blinded, but the statistician analyzing the data is blinded to group allocation
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria:
- Aged 6-10 years
- Healthy, physically and mentally (ASA I)
- Arabic-speaking parents and children
Exclusion Criteria:
- Children younger than 6 or older than 10
- Non-ASA I Children
- Children with conditions that contraindicate VR experience, such as developmental or sensory disorders.
- Acute illness that might affect HR reading or anxiety
- Non-Arabic-speaking
