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Introduction: Dental anxiety poses significant barrier to dental care. Dental anxiety may be decreased if the attributing factors are known and necessary measures are applied to increase the outcome of treatment.

Objective: The main purpose of the study was to assess dental anxiety and factors influencing dental anxiety in patients undergoing oral surgical procedures.

Materials and Method: This cross-sectional analytical study included 251 patients with age 18 years and above undergoing oral surgical procedures recruited by convenience sampling. All patients who gave the informed consent for study were selected from August 2020 to November 2020. Structured questionnaire containing information about sociodemographic profile and modified dental anxiety scale (MDAS) was used. Descriptive analysis and independent t-test was used to compare the mean difference between different parameters and dental anxiety score.

Result: Of all 124 (49.40%) of participants had total MDAS of <7, whereas 118 (47%) had total MDAS of 7-10 and 9 (3.60%) had total MDAS of 11-15. Females were found to have higher level of total MDAS than males with a P value of 0.003. Participants with age group 18-40 years, presence of accompanying person and past negative dental experience were found to have statistically significant level of dental anxiety (P value <0.05)

Conclusion: A plethora of factors like age, sex, past dental history, negative dental experiences, accompanying person, etc. influences dental anxiety levels. Understanding the factors causing dental anxiety may enable operating surgeon to pursue better patient management strategies and policy making.

Dental anxiety; modified dental anxiety scale; oral surgery.