Oral habits in 3 to 12 years old children: A burden on developing dentition

Volume : VII, Issue : IV, April - 2018

Rashi Dubey, Nilotpol Kashyap, Alok Avinash, Brij Kumar

Introduction : A habit is a repetitive action that is being done automatically. Repetitive behaviors are common in infantile period and most of them

starts and finishes spontaneously. Those habits which continue beyond a certain period of time are deemed deleterious oral habits and they are

responsible for causing malocclusion in permanent dentition. The present study evaluates the prevalence of oral habits in 3– 12 years of children

attending government and private schools at Dung and Bhilai city of Chhattisgarh.

Materials and Methods: Epidemiological study was carried out among 909 children from various government and private schools children in

Chhattisgarh. A thorough history was obtained on a specially designed proforma and presence or absence of oral habits like thumb/finger sucking,

tongue thrusting, mouth eathing, lip biting, nail biting and uxism were recorded.

Results: The results shows that out of 909 children 497(54.7%) had oral habits. (48.2 %) Mouth eathing was the most common occurrence

followed by Thumb sucking habit (18.9%) and tongue thrust (12.7%). All the habits were more frequent among 3 to 6 years of age. Anterior open

bite was found to be (27.0 %) and high significant value with nail biting (16.3%) was found .Therefore presence of mouth eathing, thumb sucking

and tongue thrusting habit were directly associated with development of malocclusion in the permanent dentition.

Conclusions: There was a high prevalence of malocclusion associated with oral habits harmful to deciduous dentition.