Serious Games in Orofacial Myofunctional Disorder Therapy for Children: An Expert Survey.

ABSTRACT

Orofacial Myofunctional Disorder (OMD) is believed to affect approximately 30-50% of all children. The various causes of OMD often revolve around an incorrect resting position of the tongue and cause symptoms such as difficulty in speech and swallowing. While these symptoms can persist and lead to jaw deformities, such as overjet and open bite, manual therapy has been shown to be effective, especially in children. However, much of the therapy must be done as home exercises by children without the supervision of a therapist. Since these exercises are often not perceived as exciting by the children, half-hearted performance or complete omission of the exercises is common, rendering the therapy less effective or completely useless. To overcome this limitation, we implemented the LudusMyo platform, a serious game platform for OMD therapy. While children are the main target group, the acceptance (and usability) assessment by experts is the first milestone for the successful implementation of an mHealth application for therapy. For this reason, we conducted an expert survey among OMD therapists to gather their input on the LudusMyo prototype. The results of this expert survey are reported in this manuscript.