I’m compelled to write about the
most common situation I’ve come across in the past few weeks which is
discussing with patients how to replace missing teeth. In reality, the best
approach is to try and avoid losing teeth. In the first place, I have seen more
cracked and split teeth recently requiring extraction and in almost every case
its directly due to patient clenching and causing the fractures. Just the other
day, a patient came in and had all the classic symptoms of severe clenching and
after discussing what’s going on in his life, he gave me a laundry list of
things he was dealing with that had dramatically increased the stress he was
experiencing and this has a direct relationship to his clenching- He was
heading toward micro cracks in his teeth which potentially could cause him to
lose some teeth. I couldn’t reduce his stress but I could make him an occlusal
splint to control the force he placed on his teeth, and hopefully prevent the
fractures and loss of teeth.
So the moral to this story is,
to prevent talking about how to replace teeth, we need to discuss how to
prevent the loss of teeth. If you feel you’re clenching and want to discuss an
occlusal splint, please call us and maybe we can avoid discussing replacing
missing teeth and keep the teeth you already have.
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