In clinical pedodontics determination of the occlusal function during growth in young children is an important task. In our first report we determined the optimal measuring conditions for clinical applications of a system comprising the DENTAL PRESCALE ®and the OCCLUZER ®- FPD 703 allowing comparatively simple evaluation of the occlusion.
In this study we concentrared on a comparative examination of the reproducibility, measuring the occlusal contact area, the average occlusal pressure, the maximal occlusal pressure, the biting force and effective pressure during continuous measurments or repeated application. The subjects in the study were 32 children with individual normal occlusion ranging from Hellman's dental age IIA (here an age under 4 years and 6 months was defined as early IIA phase and an age of over 4 years and 6months as late IIA phase) up to IIC. We also performed a comparative study of the average values classified by dental age and obtained the following results.
1. The average values obtained during continuous measurements, classified by the type of DENTAL PRESCALE ®, showed for all measuring parameters values of approximately 0-5% for both 30 R and 50 R, while for 30 W values of approximately 8-36% were observed.
2. The average values obtained for the coefficient of variation showed for all measuring parameters values of approximately 0-12% for both 30 R and 50 R, while for 30 W values of approximately 8-42% values were observed.
3. The occlusal contact area and biting force for 30 R and 50 R showed significantly higher values during the late IIA phase than during the early IIA phase.
4. Regarding the maximal occlusal and the effective pressure many measurements of 30 R and 30 W exceeded the pressure measuring range, but good results were obtained for 50 R.
The results described above suggest the necessity to consider reproducibility and pressure measuring range for each type. For an application to children of over 3 years multiple measurments using 50R and the average values were considered to be optimal.