Attrition in Everyday Dental Clinical Practice

Attrition, its prevention and therapy is a complex problem, with a multifactorial etiology. The aim of this paper is to examine the treatment of attrition in everyday dental clinical practice with the help of soft inserts.

In this study, 30 patients were included, divided into two groups of 15 patients, the study and the control group. The examined patients had first degree of attrition diagnosed according to the Bardsley index, after which the condition was noted in four intervals: the initial situation, after 2, 4 and 6 months from the first visit. The research data were processed in Statistica for Windows 7.0 and SPSS version 20, and the same were presented graphically.

In the study group with I degree of attrition, for p>0.05, no statistically significant difference was determined in the range of the Bardsley index between the four measurement times (Friedman Test: N=15; Chi-Square=7,200; df =3; p=0.0658). In the control group, for p<0.05, a significant difference was determined in the range of the Bardsley index between the four measured times (Friedman Test: N=15; Chi-Square=15.180; df=3; p=0.0017) with a significantly high value after 6 months.

From the results obtained when comparing the study group in patients with I degree of attrition and the control group, a negative change from the parafunction bruxism was observed in 20% of the test group and 47% of the control group. The results of our research indicated that in patients with the first degree of attrition from the study group, soft dental inserts give significantly better results than untreated patients in the control group. This correlates with the research of Khayat N. et al.

From the results of the subjects in the group with I degree of attrition, we can conclude that the soft inserts has great efficiency as a means of management of this parafunction and therefore its application in daily therapy is recommended.