From teeth to the joint

MUDR. DANIEL SVOBODA  

Keynote Lecture - Saturday, September 24, 2016

For a long time, when I was treating patients, I focused on dealing with decayed teeth and making fillings, dental crowns and bridges as unnoticeable as possible. However, I started paying more attention to the shape of the biting surface I became more and more interested in the morphology of occlusal tooth surfaces and the movement of jaws and I started shaping filling and tooth together from the functional perspective. Nevertheless, from time to time I see a patient with problems beyond the occlusal tooth surface. These problems include pain in joints, during biting, in temples or cheeks. Thanks to my co-operation with a physiotherapist I can better understand the link between teeth, chewing muscles and temporomandibular joints with neck and back muscles. More precisely these are the muscles responsible for upright posture. But it is not always incorrect positioning of the lower jaw which causes these problems. Nonetheless, it is good to have this relation in mind whenever we treat our patients.

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