Dental Trauma in Relation to Malocclusion among Primary School Children in Najaf City, Iraq

Dental trauma has a great impact on quality of life, affecting children physically, esthetically and psychologically. This study aimed to assess the Dental trauma in relation to malocclusion amongst primary school children within Najaf city, Iraq. This cross-sectional study was carried out with 3176 children attending 12 primary schools in Najaf city. Cluster sampling methodology was used for selection of subjects, where each school formed a cluster. All students aged 7-12 years were examined in accordance with the Ellis and Davey classification of traumatic injuries to anterior teeth and grouped according to incisors relationship to three groups CI I, CI II & CI III. Statistical inspection was done by Chi-Square test. Among the 3176 (M=1653, F=1523) examined, found Cl I 57.9 % (1842), Cl II 32.02 % (1017) & Cl III 9.98 % (317), the prevalence of traumatic injury to anterior teeth was 7.93% (252). Of those 252 patients, 64.29% (162) were boys and 35.71% (90) were girls with male/ female ratio approximately 2:1. The trauma according to incisor classification was Cl I 25 % (63), Cl II 69.84 % (176) & Cl III 5.16 (13). The uppermost percentage of tooth injuries arise amongst 9-10 years old children. Sole tooth injury was found in 79.6% of the cases, 18.5% had two teeth injury, and 1.9% had more than two teeth injury. The most commonly affected teeth were maxillary central incisors (70.1%). Fall (52.3%) was the most common cause for traumatized dental injuries. Most common type of fractures was class II (49.3%) and class III (33.8) and most of them were untreated (95.2%). Traumatized dental injury is an existent dental poser and emphasis should be given in school dental healthiness programs on deterrent aspects of traumatized dental injuries especially CI II incisor relationship.