Abstract

PENARANDA HERNANDEZ, Pablo. Tres variables Psicosociales en el dolor Cronico Bucofacial. Acta odontol. venez [online]. 2003, vol.41, n.3, pp.215-231. ISSN 0001-6365.

Abstract In the last ten years of the XX century, psychology of health has had a strong development and we are in presence of a great amount of opportunities to apply these discoveries in different areas as for example odontology. The present study justifies itself among other reasons with information found in the school of dentistry of the Central University of Venezuela, service of occlusion, which has reported an increasement in the consultation for oralfacial cronical pain, between the years 1995-1998. This pain decreases the quality of life of the patients. The aims of this study are to establish the possible relations between the behaviors of the patients in the presence of pain and three psychosocial variables using as a method the application of an interview with seven parts and three psychological scales: scale I-E by Levenson (1973), these one was adequate for the Venezuelan population by Romero Garcia (1977) to measure the level of the internal control. Scale for to evaluate the confront styles (Coping’s strategy); these one evaluates the behaviors of the patients in front of the pain; and the questionnaire for social protection by Dunn and col. (1987). Fifty patients were selected from the pool of patients with pain attending in a dental service at the school of the Central University of Venezuela and the University’s Hospital of Caracas during the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. Later to apply the scales, we made the outline for each one of these and we applied an analysis by Pearson among the psychosocial variables. Finally we made some recommendations to improve the treatment of patients with this kind of pain, with the collaboration of psychologist in the different services of the school of dentistry in the Central University of Venezuela

Keywords : Dentistry psychology; Oralfacial cronical pain; Confronting,; Locus control,; Social protection.