Bruxismo e alteração de orelha média: estudo em escolares da região oeste de Santa Maria

Abstract

As for health care, in Brazil, much emphasis is given to an innovative method employing multiprofessional teams to develop prevention work. However, it s known that, in reality, this is not the case. In public health care programs, school children have been virtually neglected. With this in mind, the aim of this study was to evaluate a quite frequent pathology, with a variable degree of severity in Dentistry: the bruxism, as well as, in the field of Speech Therapy, to evaluate the acoustic immittance measures and its relations in school children. To this end, school children from Escola Estadual Castelo Branco and Escola Municipal Leduvina Rossi were selected. The methodology is based on dental and visual clinical examination to indicate bruxism, besides tympanometric evaluation and specific questionnaires applied to children, to their parents or guardians, and teachers. From statistical data, as for bruxism, it was observed that the probability of appearance of this pathology at the first school involved is of 7,13% to 11,45%, while at the second school of 17,31% to 35,43%, in a total of 9,05% to 13,47% for the region. The school children examined show a satisfactory behavior profile in terms of hearing, 75% of whom shows normal hearing. Our findings demonstrate that bruxism patients didn t show hearing abnormality. Yet, in spite of this, we may propose as hypothesis that neglecting prevention of abnormalities in dental parafunction as well as in the auditive system can inevitably lead to severe ailments in these systems.