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Published on: January 3, 2017
Anterior open bite and speech disorders in children with Down syndrome
Rubén López-Pérez1, S Aida Borges-Yáñez, Patricia López-Morales
1Department of Oral Public Health, School of Dentistry, University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico. rlopez@correo.unam.mx
Objective:
To estimate the prevalence and to determine if there is an association between anterior open bite and the presence of speech disorders in a group of Mexican children with Down syndrome (DS).
Materials And Methods:
The subjects were a group of Mexican children with Down syndrome (DG) and a control group (CG) of Mexican pediatric patients without disabilities matched by age. The children in both groups came from families having children with anterior open bite and children without it. A parental questionnaire, dental study casts, and a speech test were used to measure the studied variables. Data were analyzed using the chi-square test (chi(2) test), and one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA), followed by the Tukey post hoc test.
Results:
Prevalence of anterior open bite was 31.6% in the DG and 22.8% in the CG. The total speech errors by omissions, substitutions, distortions, and additions indicated that there were significant differences between both groups (F = 31.68, P < .001). In general, no significant difference in speech disorders was observed between the DG and the CG regardless of the presence of anterior open bite.
Conclusions:
No association existed between speech disorders and anterior open bite in the samples studied.
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