Dentist in Keller TX on Teeth Grinding Prevention Technology
As your dentist in Keller TX has mentioned in some previous blog posts, and will again in the future: teeth grinding is a serious problem. This chronic condition called bruxism, strikes about 10% of the world’s population and can have extremely detrimental effects on oral health. To help and try to battle bruxism in the modern era, a group of researchers have developed a new “smart” mouthguard that will assist in diagnosis and the creation of treatment plans. Today, we will explore some of the information available on this new tooth-grinding-technology.
One of the biggest problems with treating bruxism up to this point was due to the lack of data available. Most teeth grinders participate in their behavior while they are sleeping at night, and may not even be aware it is occurring. With that said, without huge sleep-over type studies involved, it was not always easy for dentists to see where the area of focus and with what amount of strength that grinding was produced. The effects were always easy to identify after the fact, to look at the “fossils,” so to speak…but never in real time. The importance of this technology lies in the idea that these factors are unique to every individual patient, and must be treated accordingly.
The smart mouthguard, called the “SmartSplint,” is a custom made mouthguard that has tiny sensors built into it for patients to wear every night. The data of pressure, location, timing and more will then be able to be sent to and accessed by an application on a smartphone or a computer, and shared with the patient’s dentist. With this information, doctors like your dentist in Keller TX will be more capable of accurately prescribing efficient forms of treatment to manage, and hopefully in time, stop bruxism altogether.
This data should also help in providing physical results to patients so that they continue to wear a mouthguard at night. Many patients do not continue to follow or even seek treatment for something they cannot see in black and white or have proof for, and the SmartSplint offers exactly that. While over time, the undeniable results of the diminished chewing surface of the teeth, loosening of teeth and structural effect on the jaw all point to bruxism, they can be potentially prevented more efficiently with empirical evidence.