BABIES LIKE BEASTS. WHAT ABOUT DENTIST

Introduction: Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is an alternative or complementary typeof therapy that involves animals as a form of treatment. The goal of AAT is to improve apatient's social, emotional, or cognitive functioning. AAT involves the interactionbetween a patient and a trained animal that has been specially educated in this therapy.The animals that conduct AAT are called therapy animals which are now-a-days used inPediatric dental clinic as an aid to improvechild behaviour.Aim: To evaluate the acceptance of Dentist, Parents and child to therapy pets, child’schoice of pet and to analyse attitude of dentist towards animal-assisted therapy in thepaediatric dental set-up as an aid to improve behaviour of the child during the dentaltreatment.Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted among 60children and their parents and 108 dentist. Chi-square test was used to determine theassociation of independent variables with each of the main outcome of interest.Results: The consent to the presence of pet was given by 56.67% parents(p=0.0359,Significant) Children who chose dog as their preferred pet were 46.67% thosewho chose cat as their preferred pet were 25% (p=0.049, Significant) Almost 76%Dentist agreed that AAT helps in behaviour management for Pediatric dentist(p=0.0001,S)Conclusion: Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) can prove to be a good behaviourmanagement technique and can be a part of the exclusive Pediatric dental clinic. Keywords: Animal-assisted therapy, Pediatric Dentist