Range of mandibular movement in six-year old children with early mixed dentition

Resumen

Measurement and examination of mandibular movements areprocedures considered within any clinical diagnosis. Reports onthese ranges are quite widespread for adult patients, but little hasbeen written on the subject when dealing with children. The aim ofthe present study was to determine range of mandibular movements in six year old schoolchildren in Mexico. Data were collected on 52six year old children. In this sample, 52% were female and 48%male. With the 2 goodness of fit test to uniform distribution orequal proportions, differences between the following categorieswere examined: opening pattern, midline deviation and deviationin opening and closing. It should be noted that for the present testzero frequency category was excluded from the opening pattern.Due to the breach of normality assumption, Wilcoxon test wasused for dependent samples in the comparison of unassisted andassisted maximum opening, test for dependent samples wasused to compare left and right laterality. Opening patterns differedsignificantly (2 = 60.9231, p < 0.0001, gL = 3) straight 71.1%.Uncorrected right lateral deviation 0%, right corrected «S» deviation13.5%; uncorrected left lateral deviation 1.9%, and corrected left«S» deviation 13.5%. Average of non assisted maximum opening was 35.00 mm when compared to maximum assisted opening whichwas 39.11 mm (T = 0, p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Range of observed mandibular movements in Mexican six year old children with primarymixed dentition was different from same- age children in otherregions. This was probably due to the fact that ranks were under theinfl uence of craniofacial, weight, height and size characteristics ofeach different population.