Effect of dental implant treatment on the appearance of bruxism

Objectives: It is recognized for many clinicians that bruxism has adverse effects for a dental implant. Objective of this study was to examine if there were any significant differences in the appearance of bruxism while awake and asleep between before and after the occlusal rehabilitation using implants.
Methods: Four patients (mean age= 65.0) with the partial loss of molar teeth were participated in this study. They had no signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorder. Electromyograms (EMG) of left masseter muscles were recorded with an ambulatory EMG recorder while awake and asleep. EMG activity during speech was eliminated from the analysis of bruxism using a condenser microphone attached to the neck skin adjacent to the larynx. The measurements of EMG were conducted before and after patients were received dental implant treatments. An EMG level of 20% MVC was adopted as the threshold for analysis of phasic, tonic, and mixed EMG activities. Bruxism episodes were evaluated using the Student’s t-test.
Results: Phasic episodes after the occlusal rehabilitation using implants were significantly more frequent than before the treatment during waking hours (p<0.05).
Conclusions: The results of this study suggested that phasic EMG activities would be decreased with the occlusal rehabilitation using implants for the patients with the partial loss of molar teeth.