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People who are highly anxious about undergoing dental treatment comprise approximately one in seven of the population and require careful and considerate management by dental practitioners. This paper presents a review of a number of non-pharmacological (behavioural and cognitive) techniques that can be used in the dental clinic or surgery in order to assist anxious individuals obtain needed dental care. Practical advice for managing anxious patients is provided and the evidence base for the various approaches is examined and summarized. The importance of firstly identifying dental fear and then understanding its aetiology, nature and associated components is stressed. Anxiety management techniques range from good communication and establishing rapport to the use of systematic desensitization and hypnosis. Some techniques require specialist training but many others could usefully be adopted for all dental patients, regardless of their known level of dental anxiety. It is concluded that successfully managing dentally fearful individuals is achievable for clinicians but requires a greater level of understanding, good communication and a phased treatment approach. There is an acceptable evidence base for several non-pharmacological anxiety management practices to help augment dental practitioners providing care to anxious or fearful children and adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treatment of dentin hypersensitivity with oxalates is common, but oxalate efficacy remains unclear. Our objective was to systematically review clinical trials reporting an oxalate treatment compared with no treatment or placebo with a dentin hypersensitivity outcome. Risk-of-bias assessment and data extraction were performed independently by two reviewers. Standardized mean differences (SMD) were estimated by random-effects meta-analysis. Of 677 unique citations, 12 studies with high risk-of-bias were included. The summary SMD for 3% monohydrogen-monopotassium oxalate (n = 8 studies) was -0.71 [95% Confidence Interval: -1.48, 0.06]. Other treatments, including 30% dipotassium oxalate (n = 1), 30% dipotassium oxalate plus 3% monohydrogen monopotassium oxalate (n = 3), 6% monohydrogen monopotassium oxalate (n = 1), 6.8% ferric oxalate (n = 1), and oxalate-containing resin (n = 1), also were not statistically significantly different from placebo treatments. With the possible exception of 3% monohydrogen monopotassium oxalate, available evidence currently does not support the recommendation of dentin hypersensitivity treatment with oxalates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]