Prevalence of Gropers Appliance in Pediatric Dentistry

Abstract

Space maintainers are used to minimise undesirable drifting of teeth in the dental arch. Using space maintenance after the loss of primary teeth restricts the creation of spaces. Space maintainers also prevent the development of malocclusion due to space. The primary teeth loss can lead to different dental malocclusions like midline shifts, space loss and also crowding of teeth. Gropers appliance is a space maintainer used for children who have lost their primary anterior due to accident or caries. Gropers appliance is a fixed partial denture used for aesthetic purposes. This is used to restore mastication and speech to prevent abnormal oral habit development and also for aesthetics. The aim of the study is to find the prevalence of Gropers appliance in Pediatric Dentistry. This was a retrospective study done under a University setting. All the patients' records were collected from June 2019 to March 2020 and were reviewed. The data included patients who required space maintainers. The data was tabulated and entered in excel and the data were analysed using SPSS package software. p<0.05 was considered to be the level of statistical significance in the study. The prevalence of Gropers appliance in Pediatric Dentistry was found to be 39.6%. There was a male prevalence of 55.6% in receiving a Gropers appliance. The common age who received it was 3 years old. Within the limitation of current study, the prevalence of Gropers appliance was 39. 6% with the common age of children being 3 yrs.