(Generalized) Bruxism: Current Challenges and Innovative Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

Bruxism is a hot topic in medicine, because of the many medical conditions that may be associated with it and require multidisciplinary involvement of different professionals (e.g., dentists, neurologists, psychologists, sleep doctors).

The current evidence suggests that bruxism is a muscle behavior not suitable for evaluation in terms of the simple dichotomy “present vs absent”. The different motor activities belonging to the bruxism spectrum need to be potentially discriminated between each other, and an impression of their phenotype in terms of duration and intensity is also needed.

Knowledge on bruxism is rapidly evolving, especially with regard to the concept of bruxism itself, which is now viewed as an umbrella term for different sleep- and wake-time jaw muscle activities that are not necessarily related with specific sleep correlates or with teeth contact. This means that future development in the approaches to evaluate bruxism must reflect the ongoing paradigm change in its definition.

The final goal is to understand when bruxism is just a harmless behavior or is associated with negative (e.g., tooth wear, orofacial pain, TMD) and/or positive health outcomes (e.g., restore of airway latency in patients with sleep apnea, oral moistening).

Practitioners frequently examine patients who engage in frequent bruxism activities. Nonetheless, it is important that treatment is directed to those patients with pain and/or other negative consequences on teeth, restorations, and implants. Concurrently, overtreatment of patients with neutral or positive effects of bruxism should be avoided as well as a proper referral strategy to other specialists for any underlying disorder must be adopted.

Thus, investigating bruxism epidemiology by the use of standardised tools is a recommended strategy that may have an important social impact to integrate dental and medical knowledge.

Dr. Alessandro Bracci
Prof. Dr. Daniele Manfredini
Guest Editors

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• bruxism
• awake bruxism
• sleep bruxism
• ecological momentary assessment
• temporomandibular disorders
• teeth grinding
• teeth clenching
• mandibular bracing