Abstract
SummaryAimTo determine the prevalence of mouth breathing children at the santo amaro project/ esef/ upe, and study their main facial and behavior alterations.Study designtransversal study.Materials and methodsthere were 150 children in the sample, with ages ranging from 8 to 10 years. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire and clinical examinations. As for their breathing assessment, two tests were carried out: test 1- breath steam against a mirror; and test 2 - water remains in the mouth with lips closed for 3 minutes.Resultsmouth breathing prevalence was of 53.3%. There was no significant difference between gender, age and type of breathing. Facial alterations were: incomplete lip closure (58.8% X 5,7%), fallen eyes (40.0% X 1.4%), High palate (38.8% X 2.9%), Anterior open bite (60.0% Versus 30.0%), Hypotonic lips (3.8% X 0.0%), Circles under the eyes (97.5% Versus 77.1%).Conclusionhigh mouth breathing prevalence without significant statistical difference between genders, age and type of mouth breathing. There was no association between behavior characteristics and type of breathing. There were significant differences between physical traits and breathing pattern.
Highlights
Breathing is one of the vital functions of the human body[1]
Knowing the importance of epidemiological research today, working to reduce populational health problems, this paper aims at contributing to the study of oral breathing, through research about its prevalence and main facial and behavioral alterations associated to this respiratory pattern in school children
Assessment of facial alterations by type of breathing in the whole group Table 1 shows the list of facial alterations by type of breathing and in the whole group. From this table we stress: in the whole group the highest percentage frequencies were recorded for dark circles underneath the eyes (88.0%), anterior open bite (46.0%), inadequate lip sealing (34.0%), dropped eyes (22.0%) and high palate (22.0%)
Summary
Breathing is one of the vital functions of the human body[1]. Normal breathing should happen through the nose. It may be detoured to the oral via when there is some airway obstruction[2,3]. It is rare to have exclusive oral breathing; commonly, patients have a mixed respiratory pattern: partially oral and partially nasal[2,4,5,6,7]. Few are the papers related to the prevalence of oral breathing in the literature, and they present percentages that vary from 5%8 to 75%7. There is a slight predominance of this pathology in females when compared to their male counterparts[9]
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