Evaluation of association between Parafunctional Habits and Temporomandibular Joint Disorders among dental patients

Authors

  • Vaishali, Santhosh Kumar , Revathi Duraisamy

Abstract

Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are degenerative, musculoskeletal conditions
associated with morphological and functional deformities. The etiology of TMD is
considered multifactorial in nature and has been related to trauma, malocclusion,
parafunctional habits such as bruxism, nail-biting, and non-nutritional sucking. The
occurrence of TMD associated with parafunctional habits is in the ratio of women to
men in 4:1. The aim of the study was to evaluate the association between
parafunctional habits and temporomandibular disorders among dental patients. In this
retrospective study, 51 patients with TMD as cases and 51 patients without TMD as
controls were included in the study. Presence of parafunctional habits like thumb
sucking, tongue thrusting, nail biting, lip biting and mouth breathing were assessed
in both the groups using case sheets. Demographic details like age, gender were
recorded. Excel tabulation and SPSS version 23 was used for statistical analysis.
Descriptive statistics was done to describe the age and gender of the study population
and they were expressed in frequency and percentage. Chi-square t test was used to
test the associations between parafunctional habits and TMD; age and parafunctional
habits; gender and parafunctional habits and results obtained. In this study, of 102
patients, 54.90% were males and 45.10% were females and the 21-30 years age group
had a maximum number of participants (50.98%). TMD was predominantly present
(29.41%) in patients with parafunctional habits than in patients without
parafunctional habits (22.55%) and the results were statistically significant. (p =
0.001). The association between age and parafunctional habits was statistically not
significant (p>0.05). The association between gender and parafunctional habits was
statistically not significant (p>0.05). Within the limits of the study, it is evident that
there is a strong association between parafunctional habits and Temporomandibular
disorders among the dental patients. Thus parafunctional habits can be considered as
a risk factor for TMD. It was also observed that there was no significant association
of age and gender of the patients with parafunctional habits.

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Published

2019-12-31

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Articles