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Dentophobia is a significant problem in oral health management. In the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the associated sanitary measures (quarantine, social distancing) at national level, the fear and dental anxiety are supposedly increased, especially in children. Pediatric patients are emotionally affected when they faced with the need for emergency dental intervention. The current study seeks to assess the emotional state of children aged 8-12, who needed dental care during quarantine, at the regional level, as well as the degree of anxiety of their parents. Dental anxiety was assessed independently by the dentist, parents and children themselves. If in children, the level of dental anxiety increased insignificantly, compared to the pre-pandemic period, the levels of parental anxiety were higher. The boys in the pandemic group had a higher level of anxiety, especially in the parental assessment. The results suggest that the reorganization of oral care in the pandemic scenario did not have a major effect on children's dental anxiety. However, the results of the assessment in boys show that they may be more vulnerable and need special care to alleviate their anxiety and reduce their risk of dentophobia in the future. These conclusions should be treated with caution, given the small sample size, which requires further confirmation. It is also important to convince parents of the safety of a visit to the dentist during a pandemic, to minimize their anxiety about their children's dental fears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for a medical consultation always generates an unpleasant sensation, which becomes more accentuated, when the doctor is a surgeon. The surgeon is next to the dentist, gynecologist and psychiatrist, the doctor to whom the patient turns with the greatest fear. The operative indication and the discussion of therapeutic perspectives can trigger a psycho-emotional imbalance, leading to tomophobia. In fact, it is a complex psychological reaction, including odynophobia (fear of pain), dysmorphophobia (fear of postoperative bodily sequelae), hypnophobia (fear of anesthetic sleep, from which one could not wake up), trypanophobia (fear of injections, needles, scalpel), pantophobia (fear of everything that happens around, in this case, in the hospital environment) and above all, thanatophobia (fear of death). Therefore, it can be stated that the surgical intervention is a test of the psychoaffective capacity. The paper presents the authors' experience in 20 years (2002-2021), related to the psychological management of surgical patients, subjected to medium or large-scale surgical interventions (75% performed in emergency mode), in 958 patients. Mental stress can have consequences, both on the reactivity of the surgical patient and on his postoperative evolution. In the time crunch and in the absence of a psychologist, available to offer specific advice on medical objectives, the management of perioperative anxiety rests with the surgeon and the nursing staff. The paper discusses and underlines some elements related to the psychology of the surgical patient and insists on the importance and role of the psychologist, in the prophylaxis and treatment of what can be called operative disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]