Mouth breathing habit correction. Interdisciplinary literature review

Abstract

AIMS: There are a number of aetiological factors for mouth breathing: various mechanical factors, including tonsils and adenoids hyperplasia, rhinitis, tumours, infectious or inflammatory diseases and nasal septum deviation and even when mechanical factors are removed, mouth breathing continues in most cases. The review aim was to assess how the mouth breathing habit can be corrected to a nose breathing pattern when the airway passage is no longer obstructed. MATERIALS AND METHOD: The literature search began on 7 November 2018 with keywords: mouth breathing, nasal breathing, habit, correction, using the PubMed, Google Scholar, Medline databases. Articles were selected based on their relevance to the topic. Inclusion criteria were patients without any direct obstruction that caused mouth breathing. RESULTS: Five articles were found (including 2 clinical trials, 2 pilot studies, 1 semantic scholar). Three techniques were indicated. Myofunctional treatment therapy consisting of habit elimination and behaviour modification, jaw stabilization exercises, repatterning the oral facial muscles and changing their function for optimal nasal breathing, oral rest position. Lip muscle training by way of a lip trainer mouth piece increased lip closure force and the patient switches from mouth to nose breathing during sleep. Lip muscle training for students also was helpful for lip closure force and saturation of peripheral oxygen during sleep. Another study stated that all patients sleep with a closed mouth while using porous oral patches. In this study cephalometry revealed that the retropalatal space and retrolingual space increased statistically significantly. Nasal aeration promotes sensitization of the nasal cavity, nasal cleansing causes reduction of secretions present in the nasal cavity, therefore these techniques have proved to be effective in improving nasal patency.