COMPARISON OF AGE INFLUENCE IN CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMARY DENTITION OCCLUSION AND PREVALENCE OF MALOCCLUSION IN 4-6 YEARS OLD PHYSICALLY DISABLED AND NORMAL CHILDREN

Dr. Deepak P. Bhayya*, Dr. Pramod Shetty, Dr. Tarulatha R. Shyagali, Dr. Sudhanshu Saxena, Dr. Sonia Tiwari and Dr. Pradeep Vishnoi

ABSTRACT

The oral health disparities between individuals with disabilities and the general population are widely reported, and malocclusion is no exception. There is a need to explore their oral health status, as the number of people living with disabilities is growing. The study was aimed to determine and compare age influence in changes in occlusal characteristics in disabled and normal children. All the children between the ages of 4-6 years were checked for the occlusal and malocclusion characteristics. A stratified cluster random sampling procedure was performed to collect the representative sample. A total of 500 children were examined. Out of which 400 children were physically disabled and 100 children were normal. A pre structured Questionnaire was used to record the demographic data of the children. Data was statistically analysed using chi-squared test was used; a value of p<0.05 was regarded as significant. There was statistically insignificant difference between the different disabled children and the normal children for the prevalence of different occlusal and malocclusion parameters for different age group except for the developmental space in the 4 year old and the overjet and overbite prevalence in the 5 year old children, where the data showed a statistically significant difference. It can be concluded that pattern of characteristics of occlusion and malocclusion did not differ much in disabled and normal children.

Keywords: Age wise, disabled children, malocclusion, occlusion, normal children.