THE POSITION OF THE TONGUE AND VOLUME OF THE UPPER RESPIRATORY TRACT IN PATIENTS WITH MALOCCLUSION

Abstract

This study is a fragment of the planned research work "Features of rehabilitation of orthodontic patients in various ages" state registration No. 022U201229. Malocclusion and functional disorders that accompany them are not only a health problem, but also a rather important aspect in the process of personality formation and adaptation in society. To increase the effectiveness at the beginning of orthodontic treatment and stability in the retention period, it is important to take into account the etiological factor that led to the occurrence of malocclusion. In order to study and evaluate the position of the tongue in patients with malocclusion, to identify the influence and relationship on the patency of the upper respiratory tract, the volume of the oropharyngeal area was measured according to the McNamara’s method, the size and position of the tongue on cone-beam computer tomograms of orthodontic patients on the Donders’s residual space. The average indicators of the volume of the upper respiratory tract in patients with class I are 10.103±1.27 cm3, in patients with class II by 0.8 cm3 less 9.3±0.706 cm3. In patients with class I, the average parameters of the space of Donders are 4.4379±0.8077 mm. In patients with class II, the average values were lower 2.6667±0.3609 mm (р˂0.5). The distribution of patients by gender shows that in men the position of the tongue (space of Donders) had average indicators of 2.411±0.318 mm, in women the average indicators were almost 2 times higher and amounted to 4.603±0.754 mm, which is typical for the displacement of the tongue to the bottom, i.e. lower position of the tongue (р˂0.01). That is, the volume of the respiratory tract depends on the skeletal structure of the pathology, in other words, the morphology of the thoracic duct in the sagittal plane. Cephalometric analysis of the interaction of the airways and the tongue in orthodontic patients on TRG is quite limited compared to the CBCT image, as the CBCT enables a three-dimensional study of the shape and volume of the upper respiratory tract, the position of the tongue at rest. The position of the tongue has a rather insignificant effect on the type of malocclusion in the sagittal plane, but it has a rather large effect on the formation of the pathology in the vertical plane, which is the subject of research in future works.