Preventive And Interceptive Need In Children Below 10 Years Of Age

Interceptive orthodontics treatment is a procedure or intervention phase aiming for eliminating or reducing the need for complex treatment in permanent dentition. These interceptive measures are needed to prevent or avoid adverse occlusal and dental consequences, which are the negative effect for the early loss of primary molars because of nonnutritive habits. The aim of this study is to assess the preventive and interceptive need in children below 10 years old. A total of 41400 case records of patients were evaluated between the period of June 2019 to March 2020. The study was conducted on patients below 10 years old. Case records which were complete and data regarding dental or skeletal malocclusion were included for the study. Incomplete case records were excluded. Convenient sampling method was used and photographic verification was done for cross verification of data. All the data was verified by a single trained examiner. Chi square test was done and the association between age and different types of malocclusion was found to be statistically significant. Within the limit of our study, it could be concluded that prevalence for preventive and interceptive need among children below 10 years of age is relatively low at 6.03%. Males had higher prevalence for preventive and interceptive needs compared to females. Children aged 8-10 years old had higher prevalence for malocclusions when compared to children aged 4-7 years old. Males had higher predilection for malocclusion especially crossbite in comparison to females.