In vivo measurements of tooth wear over 12 months

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

It would appear there was <15 μm tooth wear in six months, in the majority of a cohort of patients referred to secondary care.

Main

Rodriguez J M, Austin R S et al. Caries Res 2012; 46: 9–15

The topology of tooth surfaces were recorded at baseline and then after 6 months in 63 subjects (and in some of these patients at 12 months, although this data could not be analysed). Silicone impressions of the teeth were recorded. Tooth wear was measured on gypsum replicas, using non-contacting laser profilometer and surface matching software. At the subject level, 77.7% of subjects had <15 μm of tooth wear after six months. However when recruited to the study, all subjects demonstrated at least 20 worn teeth with dentine exposure. Such observations could be reconciled by the hypothesis that tooth wear occurs in bursts. When analysing heartburn symptoms and vomiting only, the coefficient of variation R² (how well future outcomes are likely to be predicted by the model) was 0.10 (p = 0.001).