Assessment of various deleterious oral habits and its effects on primary dentition among 3-5 years old children in Davangere city

Childhood is the mirror which reflects the propensities of adulthood. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to determine the prevalence of malocclusion, deleterious oral habits and relationship of deleterious oral habits and malocclusions in 3-5 years old children. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 800 school children aged ranges between 3 and 5 years who were randomly selected from 10 different public schools in Davangere city, India. Occlusal assessments and clinical examination for assessing the oral habits was carried out. After obtaining the data, Chi-square test and Z-test were used to analyze the data. The results showed the prevalence of malocclusion was 8.9% and of various deleterious oral habits was 47.2%. Tongue thrusting (29.5%) was most commonly observed habit followed by mouth-breathing (26.5%). In the presence of deleterious, oral habits 13% of children were observed with the malocclusions. The prevalence of normal deciduous dentition was observed in 87% of children even in the presence of habits. Prevalence of oral habits observed was highly significant constituting 47.2% and the correlation between prevalence of oral habits and malocclusions in deciduous dentition does not seem to be strong, but we found tongue thrusting and mouth-breathing habit more in this age group constituting 29.5% and 26.2%, respectively, contributing to the malocclusion.