Utilização de fitoterápicos em pacientes odontopediátricos para o controle da ansiedade: revisão de literatura

Abstract

Dental anxiety is characterized as a malaise that can negatively interfere with dental treatment, both for adults and children. This topic is intensively studied in pediatric dentistry, as the literature reports that anxiety and dental care are related. In this context, some studies show the use of herbal medicines to control anxiety, mainly because they have less toxicity when compared to synthetic drugs. However, there are few studies that address this topic. Thus, the objective of this work was to carry out a literature review in order to analyze the effectiveness of herbal medicines in the control of anxiety in pediatric dentistry patients. Therefore, a search was carried out in the Pubmed/Medline, BVS, and SciElo databases, using the words “Phytotherapy”, “Pediatric Dentistry” and “Anxiety” as descriptors, as well as their respective terms in English: “Phytotherapy”, “Pediatric Dentistry” and "Anxiety" combined two by two and finally the three words together, applying the Boolean operator AND with filters from the period from 2011 to May 2022. In this way, a total of 880 results were found, being selected 17 of these, after reading their respective titles, abstracts, and applying the inclusion criteria, which were articles in English and Portuguese, whose themes and abstracts were related to the objective of the work. As for the exclusion criteria, there were articles that were not related to the topic. Studies have shown that herbal medicines and traditional herbal products are effective in relieving the symptoms of dental anxiety and are well accepted by patients and their caregivers. Thus, it is essential to produce studies on this subject by Dental Surgeons, aiming to improve care, so that they become progressively more humanized and less traumatic, thus offering less risk to the patient.