Age and Gender Wise Prevalence of Oral Habits - A Retrospective Study

Abstract

Oral habits are learned patterns of muscle contraction and have very complex nature. Persistent oral habits
beyonds normal age of children have been considered as a significant factor that can lead to malocclusions.
A total of 86000 case records between June 2019 to march 2020 were screened and evaluated in which
18656 children less than 18 years were taken into our study. Chi square test was done to estimate the
relationship between oral habits with age and gender. The results showed that the overall prevalence of oral
habits among children were 3.9%. The highest prevalence rate of oral habits was tongue thrusting (43.5%)
followed by thumb sucking (39.1%) and lip biting (17.4%) respectively. Chi square test was done in between
age and type of oral habits and the p value was 0.025< 0.05 was termed to be statistically significant. Within
the limit of our study, oral habits were detected in less than quarter of the examined population. There was a
significant difference for age wise prevalence of oral habits, with younger people indulging more oral habits
than elders. Among the types of oral habits, tongue thrusting was the commonest oral habits indulged among
the children.