Comparison between two different registration protocols for the count of sleep bruxism events in a sample of healthy...

The aim of the present research is to compare, in a group of healthy young individuals, the number of sleep bruxism (SB) events with the use of two different electromyographic (EMG) devices, which adopt two different protocols for scoring the events.

The study was performed on 10 individuals recruited at the University of Siena, Italy. Participants were asked to perform one night of sleep-time recording wearing simultaneously, in their home environment, two different EMG devices, the Bruxoff (Bruxoff^®, Turin, Italy) and the dia-BRUXO (dia-BRUXO, Biotech-Novations, Sanremo, Italy). SB events were identified by the Bruxoff software algorithm as the EMG peaks of an amplitude that exceeds 10% of the maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) performed by the subject before the start of the registration, and that are preceded by a 20% increase in the heart rate compared to the baseline. Conversely, the dia-BRUXO software identified the EMG peaks exceeding 10% of the maximum contraction (MC) recorded during the entire registration period. Both devices were set to count the events lasting 1-5 s. After each night of recording, data was downloaded through the dedicated software of each device, which generates a report with the number of sleep bruxism events.

All the recruited participants completed the registrations at the first attempt without reporting any detachment of the electrodes. The Pearson test showed a strong correlation between the number of SB events scored by the two devices (r = 0.9613, p < 0.001).

Within the limitation of this study, our results suggest the existence of a strong correlation between the two different registration protocols for the registration of the number of SB events.

The present study suggest that clinicians can adopt easier and user-friendly protocols for the registration of sleep bruxism events, that do not necessarily require a pre-calibration of the device.