ONO YUMIE    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Science and Technology    Position   Professor
Language	Japanese
Publication Date	2016/03
Type	Academic Journal
Peer Review	Peer reviewed
Title	Relationship between Occlusal Discomfort Syndrome and Occlusal Threshold
Contribution Type	Co-authored (other than first author)
Journal	Kokubyo Gakkai Zasshi
Journal Type	Japan
Publisher	Kokubyo Gakkai
Volume, Issue, Page	83(1),pp.7-12
Total page number	null
Author and coauthor	Munakata M, Ono Y, Hayama R, Kataoka K, Ikuta R, Tamaki K.
Details	Occlusal dysesthesia has been defined as persistent uncomfortable feelings of intercuspal position continuing for more than 6 months without evidence of physical occlusal discrepancy. The problem often occurs after occlusal intervention by dental care. Although various dental treatments (e. g. occlusal adjustment, orthodontic treatment and prosthetic reconstruction) are attempted to solve occlusal dysesthesia, they rarely reach a satisfactory result, neither for patients nor dentists. In Japan, these symptoms are defined by the term "Occlusal discomfort syndrome" (ODS). The aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of ODS with the simple occlusal sensory perceptive and discriminative test. Twenty-one female dental patients with ODS (mean age 55.8 ± 19.2 years) and 21 age- and gender-matched dental patients without ODS (mean age 53.1 ± 16.8 years) participated in the study. Upon grinding occlusal registration foils that were stacked to different thicknesses, participants reported the thicknesses at which they recognized the foils (recognition threshold) and felt discomfort (discomfort threshold). Although there was no significant difference in occlusal recognition thresholds between the two patient groups, the discomfort threshold was significantly smaller in the patients with ODS than in those without ODS. Moreover, the recognition threshold showed an age-dependent increase in patients without ODS, whereas it remained comparable between the younger (< 60 years old) and elderly (60 years old or more) patient subgroups with ODS. These results suggest that occlusal discomfort threshold rather than recognition threshold is an issue in ODS. The foil grinding procedure is a simple and useful method to evaluate occlusal perceptive and discriminative abilities in patients with ODS.