Abstract:
Chewing pressure is one of the important indicators of the functional capacity of the chewing system and plays an important role in determining the influence of ontogenetic mechanisms on chewing function. The aim of the work is to investigate the distribution of chewing pressure in the left and right halves of the dental arches in girls and boys with a physiological bite of the Ukrainian ethnic group. An examination of the oral cavity and measurement of chewing pressure were performed in 222 adolescents (girls 16–20 years old, boys 17–21 years old, who had one of the physiological bite types (orthognathic, direct, biprognathic). The determination of chewing pressure was carried out using the Fuji Prescale MS program (license number 4761-0000-0404-С67B-CAB2-57A2), which is based on the advanced Fuji film coating technology and allows you to assess the pressure distribution over the entire chewing surface of the tooth. The pressure range of the MS film in our study ranged from 10 to 50 MPa. The probability of the difference between the magnitude of chewing pressure between individual teeth on the left and right half of the dental arch was determined using the Mann-Whitney U-test in the licensed software package “Statistica 5.5”. It was found that in girls on the right and left halves of the dental arch there is a gradual increase in chewing pressure from the second incisor to the second molar in the absence of a significant difference between the incisors. In young men, a gradual but statistically significant increase in chewing pressure was found from the second incisor to the second molar on the right half of the dental arch, and on the left - a gradual increase in chewing pressure from the first incisor to the second molar with no significant difference between the first and second incisors and the first and second premolars. The highest value of chewing pressure was found between the second molars of the upper and lower jaw.
