Mouth breathing 3-to-5-years-old children. Parrish Catia la Mar, Vargas. January-June 2008

Abstract

Normal breathing involves the adequate usage of the nasal and nasopharyngeal tract. The volume increase of the structures inside these spaces makes impossible air passing through these ducts, resulting in children breathing through the mouth, bringing about serious alterations of the stomatognathic apparatus, affecting the child in aesthetical, functional, and psychical way. We developed a transversal, descriptive study, with the objective of characterizing, in a clinical and epidemiological way, mouth breathing in children aged 3-5 years in the parrish Catia la Mar, from January to June 2008. The universe was formed by 350 children and the sample by 100 children having the habit of mouth breathing. The mouth breathing habit was observed in younger children, more frequently male. Pathological mouth breathing prevailed over mouth breathing per habit in male children. Bronchial asthma and asthmatic bronchitis were predominant in ages between 3 and 5 years, the most affected genre was the male one, while among females acute rhinitis prevailed at the age of 5. The patients with obstructions in the respiratory ways were mouth breathers and there was a predominance of adenoidal and/or tonsillar hypertrophy, and turbinal hypertrophy for girls and septum deviation for boys.