Oral and facial manifestations of sexual abuse in children and adolescentes

Abstract

Objective: To describe the main oral and facial manifestations of child sexual abuse. Methods: This is an integrative literature review, with searches in the databases LILACS and SCIELO, in addition to using the Google Scholar search engine, between May and December 2022. The descriptors used were: Child Sexual Abuse, Dentists, Sexual Violence and Oral Manifestations. Inclusion criteria were studies published between 2015 and 2022, free of charge and written in Portuguese. As exclusion criteria: duplicate studies, abstracts, theses, and any study outside the intended context of this work. After the searches, a screening of articles was performed, limiting it to only 7 studies to compose the final research sample. Results: Several physical characteristics arising from sexual abuse were found, all related to neglect and mistreatment of the victim's health, constituting a set of physical signs that correlate with psychological trauma and behavioral changes. Final considerations: It is considered that the main manifestations are lacerations of the lingual and buccal frenulum, lacerations of the lip, bruises, burns, dental, maxillary and mandibular fractures, petechiae on the palate, scratches, bruises and specific lesions of different sexually transmitted infections.