Diagnosis and Treatment Planning in Severely Worn Dentition

심한 교모증 환자에서의 진단 및 치료계획 수립

The occurrence and pattern of tooth wear are related to cultural, dietary, occupational, and geographic factors, Excessive occlusal wear can result in pulpal exposure, occlusal disharmony, functional inability. Surface loss can be differentiated into 3 general causal categories: i) mechanical loss, which includes attrition, ii) abrasion chemical loss including erosion, and finally iii) a proposed biomechanical category described as abfraction. Considering that mechanical wear is frequently asymptomatic, patients may have parafunctional habit. Structured clinical decision analysis in fixed prosthodontics, as other branches of dentistry do, allows the practitioner to consider the patient's problems more thoroughly based on the clinical data and extenuation factors. This discipline of decision making is intended to complement the experience level and educational background of the clinician in assisting the patient through the decision process. Additionally, CDA helps the clinician define not only the pre-existing condition of the patient prior to irreversible therapy, but also better treatment strategies for the patient over an extended period. The systematic nature of decision analysis stimulates the dentists to pay further attention to those factors, which is germane to the overall complexity of the case, and exclude factors, which have little influence on its final outcome. Further implementation of computerized databases, procedural outcome probabilities based on clinical and laboratory studies and the clinical experience of those who use it, may provide quite a promising future in the field of structured and formalized clinical decision analysis.