Bruxism: Occlusal splints to prevent bruxism can also be manufactured digitally

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching is a common problem. This behaviour is increasing amongst more and more patients. Stress is a primary cause of bruxism, whereby jaw clenching and teeth grinding occurs mostly unconsciously at night time. An occlusal splint can help the condition. As a laboratory owner, you can produce splints cost-effectively and reliably. Allow the digital process to help!

Long-term, patients suffering from bruxism put great strain on their teeth and jaw joints: They more or less overstretch their masticatory muscles. Possible causes for the mostly nocturnal, therefore unconscious activity of grinding and clenching teeth are:

• Psychological stress
• Great excitement
• Tense neck

Tooth pain, jaw and joint pain as well as irreparable tooth damage – this is how bruxism, a mostly unconscious and nocturnally occurring grinding and clenching of teeth, affects the patient. These cases can be treated with occlusal splints.

Occlusal splints can be made conventionally or manufactured digitally

Occlusal splints, to prevent grinding of teeth, can be made conventionally and also digitally. Irrespective of either a conventional or digital manufacturing method, the produced splints can be used for their intended purpose of treating bruxism. In the conventional method, the splints are made with thermoforming foil. This procedure is time-consuming. As a dental technician, you can greatly simplify your work by changing to the digital production method and milling bruxism splints instead. Many dental laboratories already work with this method. Some laboratories now produce more bruxism splints digitally than conventionally. 

Helping patients with bruxism using CAD/CAM

If you, as a dental technician are open to digital processes, CAD/CAM can offer you the following advantages:

Advantage 1: Work more efficiently

• You can use your existing milling machine and therefore increase your profitability.
• It may even be possible to manufacture two splints from one material disc. This allows you to use existing material more economically, with less waste.
• You no longer need a model, just an intraoral scan from your dentist. The splint can be constructed on this information.
• A bruxism splint can be made faster with this procedure. You save time.
• The digital manufacture has a high degree of precision. Therefore, the fit of the manufactured splint is very good from the start. In addition, there is no polymerization shrinkage with an industrially produced splint material. This is advantageous for the fitting accuracy. Finally, the dental technician spends less manual working time finishing the splint because after milling, it only requires polishing.

Advantage 2: Easy to reproduce

Even after the digitally produced object has been finished, the relevant milling data still exists. Advantage: If the milled splint is damaged, broken or lost, it can easily be reproduced.

Advantage 3 : High material quality

Due to the industrial production of the splint, the monomer concentration is lower. This means: The material contains less residual monomer. As a result, the biocompatibility is increased and the allergy potential for the patient is decreased.

Conclusion: Treatment of bruxism with state-of-the-art production methods

Digital procedures allow dental technicians to significantly increase their efficiency even on a small scale. One example is the production of occlusal splints for the treatment bruxism, something more and more patients are suffering with. Digitally milled bruxism splints made from PMMA are also more esthetical. Overall, they give many people a better feeling. 

Material tip for occlusal splints 

For example, to digitally mill bruxism splints, you can use the clear PMMA disc, ProArt CAD Splint.