AIM: the proposal of this study was to associate infant feeding methods, mother’s previous knowledge about breast-feeding, installation of oral habits and presence of malocclusions. METHODS: 79 children (39 with suction habits and 40 without habits), both genres, from ages between 2 and 5 years old, with complete health deciduous dentition were randomizedly selected from the ones attended at Baby’s Clinic, in Federal University of Espírito Santo. Only one examiner (Kappa intra-examiner= 0.96) evaluated facial characteristics and the occlusion at transversal, antero-posterior and vertical relation. Each mother was oriented to answer a questionnaire concerning child’s development and the degree of information she had received about breast-feeding, habits, malocclusion and oral breathing. The qui-square, Fischer, t Student and Odds Ratio tests were used. RESULTS: the results evidenced that: 1) there is an association between breast-feed and less development of oral habits (p<0.01); 2) mothers' knowledge about breast-feed results in a prolongation of breast- feeding’s period both for children with or without habits (p<0.001); 3) children with oral habits have a bigger relative risk to develop malocclusion at the vertical way (p<0.001; OR=12.8), at the transversal way (p<0.001; OR=4.25) and at the antero-posterior canines relation (p<0.001). Antero-posterior alteration at deciduous second molars did not present statistical significant difference (p=0.07). CONCLUSION: clinical results suggested that the degree of mothers' information and a prolongated breast-feed period are directly related with lower incidence of malocclusion in this phase of children’s development.
Suction habits; Malocclusion; Infant feeding
