Prevalence of bad oral habits and relationship with prevalence of malocclusion in sammawa city students aged (6-18)‎ years old

Abstract EN

Background : These oral habits maybe seen in children, adolescents and adults causing serious effect on their facial growth and dentition that is to say they may be related to malocclusion which is a condition where there is departure from the normal relation of the teeth in the same dental arch or to the teeth in the opposing arch. Materials and methods: This study was conducted from 10 April 2011 to 29 may 2013 on (3300) students and (300) students as control group aged (6-18) years old attending primary, intermediate and secondary schools in Sammawa city which lies 280km to the south of Baghdad, itself part of middle furat of Iraq were studied with respect to bad oral habits, sagittal occlusion according to Angle's classification, overjet, overbite, posterior crossbite and spacing and crowding. Results : The sample consisted of 3300 students.

786 students of all the age groups were found to have bad oral habits, which represented 23.8 % of the total sample examined in this study (411,52.3 %) of the 786 were males and (375,47.7 %) were females.

Some of the students had a single habit (481,61.2 %) and others were found to have multiple habits (305,38.8 %).

The most prevalent habit was nail biting (184,23.4 %), followed by tongue thrust (169,21.5 %), digit sucking (147, 18.7 %), mouth breathing (129,16.4 %), lip habit (111,14.1 %), and the least was other habits (46,5.9 %). Conclusion : The Prevalence of malocclusion in digit sucking group had very highly significant difference when compared with control group followed by tongue thrust group, mouth breathing group while other groups had low significant difference.