Association Between Bruxism Awareness and Dental Attrition, Abfractions, Occlusal Dimples

Methods: A total of 102 volunteer Greek adult subjects (mean age 44.6 „b 5.7 years old) were classified in two groups (50 self-reporting bruxism and 52 not reporting bruxism) according to their answers to two questions related to their awareness of their teeth grinding or/and clenching. From accurate dental casts of the participants, assessment of occurrence and sevetity of noticeable dental attrition (anterior, posterior) was performed by two experienced clinicians using a method described by Johansson et al (1993). Abfractions (V-shaped on cervical region) and occlusal dimples were registered on study casts if these clinical signs found on at least two natural teeth. All the statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS (ver. 11.5) statistical package enhanced with the module Exact Tests.

Results: In the present study, the occurrence of noticeable dental attrition, abfraction and occlusal dimples was compared between a group of self-reporting bruxism and a group of not reporting bruxism. The results have shown that although, the two groups were statistically significant different (at significance level a=0.05) according to the distribution of the four clinical signs, the greatest differences occurred for the attrition posterior and anterior signs. On the contrary the difference between the two groups was weaker for the occlusal dimples and clinical insignificant for the abfractions (at significance level a=0.05).

Conclusions: In this study sample, the occurrence of four clinical signs (dental attrition posterior-anterior, abfractions and occlusal dimples), observed on dental casts, is associated with bruxism awareness group. It is suggested that mainly dental attrition (posterior, anterior) signs may differentiate self -reporting bruxism group from not reporting bruxism group.