Estudo da morfologia craniofacial de crianças respiradoras nasais e orais de etiologia obstrutiva e viciosa

Abstract

Mouth breathing is frequently associated to growth alterations and to the oral facial structures development, as well as head position alterations. However, it is manifested a lack of studies able to relate the disorders in the craniofacial morphology to the mouth breathing etiology. In this sense, this study aimed to verify the possible craniofacial morphology differences between nasal breathing and mouth breathing children of obstructive and vicious etiology, through the application of oral facial anthropometric and head posture evaluation. The sample consisted of 62 leukoderms children at ages between 7 years and 11 years and 11 months old. It was carried out a speech-language selection and otolaryngologist evaluation, followed by a nasal fibroscopy, leading to the participants classification into three groups: nasal breathers, mouth obstructive breathers and mouth vicious breathers. An oral facial anthropometric evaluation took place in order to determine the oral facial measurements and proportions and the participants facial type; and the computerized photogrammetric evaluation, followed by a physical examination in order to verify the head position related to the horizontal. The data were descriptively and statistically analyzed at the significance level of 5%. The comparisons among the groups were done through the ANOVA variance analysis and the Kruskal-Wallis test; the association between the variants was verified through the chi-square independence test and the residual analysis of the chi-square; and the correlation analyses was done by the Spearman s rank coefficient. The anthropometric measurements and the oral facial proportions, as well as the head position, were similar in the three groups. There was an association between the facial type and the breathing mode/mouth breathing etiology. The significant associations were braquifacial in the nasal breathers group and also in the obstructive mouth breathers. A correlation between facial type and head position was not verified. In this sense, it can be concluded, by the present study, that nasal and obstructive mouth breathers of obstructive and vicious etiology do not present differences concerning the studied craniofacial morphology aspects, except for to the facial type.