Bruxism in children treatment: Systematic review of the literature

Objectives: The aim of this review is to study the therapeutic approaches of bruxism in children
Methods: The bibliographic research was conducted in three research databases: Pubmed, Research Gate and Lilacs. Only articles published between 2000 and 2018 were considered.
The following keywords Were used: “Bruxism”, “Children”, “Child”, “Treatment”, “Management”, “Occlusal splint Therapy” , “Therapeutics”, “Drug Therapy”, “Prevention and Control “, “Psychology”, “Rehabilitation”, “Surgery”, “Physical Therapy Modalities” , “Cognitive Therapy”, “Psychoanalytic Therapy”, “Exercise Therapy”, “Respiratory Therapy”, “Adenoids”, ”Child Therapy”.
The relevant data contained in the selected articles were extracted and analyzed according to a predefined reading grid elaborated by the authors of this work.

Results: A total of 22 articles were selected. After deleting the 5 repetitive publications between the three searches, 17 relevant articles were finally selected for our systematic review.
Two types of bruxism treatment were described: reversible therapies such as psychological, pharmacological and orthopedic therapies; and irreversible surgical therapies that are indicated in case of associated respiratory diseases.

Conclusions: The reversible therapeutics are the most indicated approaches for the treatment of bruxism in children. However the investigation of etiologic factors must be considered as a first step of the diagnosis of bruxism of children in order to improve prognostics of this parafunction