Urinary catecholamine levels in children with and without a history of dentofacial injuries.

This study was conducted to investigate the existence of any differences in the urinary catecholamine levels in children with and without a history of dentofacial injuries. Three hundred fourteen children, boys and girls, aged 6 to 8 years were included in this study. A questionnaire was distributed to the parents to collect information about the child's history of dentofacial injuries. A 24-h urine sample was collected for each subject and a representative sample (25 ml) was analyzed by the HPLC technique to assay the catecholamine content. Of the examined children 68 (43 boys and 25 girls) had a history of dentofacial injury and constituted the experimental group. A control group of 68 children (43 boys and 25 girls) without a history of dentofacial injury was matched by age and sex. The Student t-test was used to identify any differences in urinary catecholamine levels between the two groups. The 95% probability was used. The results showed statistically significant differences in the mean values of epinephrine, while the differences in norepinephrine and dopamine were not significant. This study suggested that children with emotionally stressful states run a greater risk of having dentofacial injuries.