These fears are seldom diagnosed or treated, as they are often extinguished into adulthood and do not often develop into phobias preventing individuals from seeking medical attention.
Fear of medical procedures can be classified under a broader category of "blood, injection, and injury phobias".
[1] It is normal to become squeamish at the sight of blood, injury, or gross deformity,[4]: 376 but many overcome these fears by the time they reach adulthood.
But imagine what goes through the mind of a three-year-old when he sees a doctor or nurse all suited up and wearing a surgical mask: "It's a monster!
Being scared of surgery has led to "eating disorders, sleep disturbances, regression to earlier levels of behavior, depression, and somatization such as loss of voice after tonsillectomy.
Some hospitals allow parents to come into the surgery room and stay with the child, calming them until the anesthetic has taken effect.
Preoperative education and counseling, the aim of which is to provide the patient with reliable and accessible information, has been found to have a huge positive impact on reducing the fear and anxiety associated with surgery.
[6] It has been established that older people prefer traditional methods of surgical education, while younger patients are eager to use multimedia (computer-animated videos), while both age-specific populations still prefer direct contact with the operating physician in easing the psychological distress associated with fear of surgery.
[14] "A very young child may find the smells of a dental surgery and the sounds of the equipment working very overwhelming" says H.R.
[14] Other methods include tell-show-do, positive reinforcement, distraction, nonverbal communication or even general anesthesia and conscious sedation.
Both age and gender have huge differences in how people express and deal with their fear of dental work.
[16] This expectance of pain leads many to miss appointments and be unwilling to seek professional help for simple things like toothaches.
These simple things can lead to larger problems resulting in decaying teeth and poorly cared for gums.
Explanations of what is going on can help, also dentists speaking to patients with less embarrassing wording (such as calling what they have a phobia or treating them like a child while discussing their problem) to encourage them to express and cope with their dental fear.
There is a medical condition called white coat hypertension that deals with the raising of high blood pressure while in the presence of doctors.
These responses coincide with their ability to efficiently describe the intensity and areas on their body that they feel pain.
[19] Interestingly, toddlers display a drop in vaccination coverage and compliance to scheduled doctor visits when compared to infants.
[20] Needle-associated pain is the key factor that children fear when visiting a doctor's office, regardless if they are having a shot or not.
[21] Although even healthy children experience fear and anxiety with frequent medical procedures involving needles such as blood draws or immunizations, some individuals who fear needles may refuse to receive shots that are mandatory, thus leading to greater risk of getting certain diseases, and many avoid treatment for serious medical conditions.
[18] In order to mitigate the effects of fear of needles in children, many treatment and distraction techniques have been evaluated in their ability to reduce report of pain, distress, and physiological responses to stress.
Play-based distraction strategies such as bubble blowing, interaction with a robot, engagement with desired toys/electronic devices, engagement with a trained hospital support clown, illusion kaleidoscopes, reading developmentally books, have been found to benefit pre-schoolers in terms of coping with needle-related medical procedures.
[21] Virtual reality (VR) technology has been used to manage the pain and anxiety associated with medical procedures in both children and adults, enabling researchers or clinicians to modify multimodal input stimuli to make patients feel "present" in the projected environment.
[5] In the New England Journal of Medicine, Lountzis and Rahman published an article about a 34-year-old woman who had a growth on her fingers that doctors were unable to completely remove because of her fear of needles.