Prevalence of Angle’s malocclusion in sensory-deprived and normal school children of age group of 12-16 years in India: A study conducted in 2016-2018

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Malocclusion has multifactorial etiology and the environmental factors play a major role in the occurrence of a malocclusion. Physical constraint faced by the disabled children may increase the chance of having malocclusion more than their normal counterparts. Thus, this study was done to evaluate the difference in the prevalence of Angle’s malocclusion in sensory-deprived and normal children of the central India. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed on 342 school-going children aged 12-16 years. The sample comprised of equal number of sensory-deprived and normal children (n = 171 for each group). Physical disabilities included being deaf, dumb, or visually-impaired. The children were examined for the type of Angle’s malocclusion. Obtained data were subjected to chi-square test to note the difference in the prevalence of malocclusion between the two groups using the SPSS software. A P-value less than 0.05 was considered to be significant. RESULTS: Angle’s malocclusion was prevalent in 90.06% of the sensory-deprived children and 84.80% of the normal children. The most prevalent malocclusions in sensory-deprived children were class II division 1 and class I type I malocclusion with 24.60% and 21.63% prevalence, respectively. In normal children the most prevalent malocclusions were class I type II and class II division 1 with the prevalence of 23.39% and 21.05%, respectively. The results obtained were statistically significant. CONCLUSION: High prevalence of malocclusion is seen in the sensory-deprived children compared to the normal children. The study warrants the need of orthodontic treatment in the current population group.