BruxApp is an application useful for both the patients and the dentists who have to manage patients with bruxism.
PATIENTS
Patients can download BruxApp for three different purposes:
– To understand if they have bruxism.
– To try evaluating its frequency and time-related course.
– To manage the behavioral education over the long-term period.
DENTIST
One of the main difficulties of bruxism diagnosis, especially when the patient is asymptomatic, is to make a diagnosis of ongoing or past bruxism; this datum may have important clinical implications, especially as far as extensive prosthodontic rehabilitations are concerned, since bruxism is a risk factor that may jeopardize the long-term prosthodontic success.
Until now, the dentist facing a possible bruxer had to rely on very simple questions (“Do you clench your teeth”), often receiving unclear answers (“I don’t know…I am not sure”). Indeed, most bruxism patients are often not aware of it, and the presence of dental signs is not useful to discriminate between ongoing/past bruxism.
Also, an asymptomatic patient may become symptomatic (e.g., the onset of TMJ or jaw muscles’ pain), but he/she could also never develop any symptoms and damage his/her teeth/crowns without being aware of it.
Now the dentists can use an effective instrument for an immediate consultation, which may help them to steer the diagnostic process toward a certain direction and, consequently, to have important information for the prognosis and management. They will easily “prescribe” the application to their patients, as they usually do for other diagnostic or therapeutic tools.
Another peculiar BruxApp feature is to allow a behavioral re-education of the patient who received a bruxism diagnosis.
It’s important to back up the protective effects of mouthguards and oral appliances with a potentially true therapeutic biofeedback action against awake bruxism.
The challenge of the BruxApp project is to take care of such management and to carry on a preventive action as well.
Another utility is the presence of clear information, drawn from scientific sources, which allow patients to achieve a full comprehension of bruxism phenomena and increase their cooperation levels.
BruxApp helps the dentist to complement the diagnostic process and to supply the correct information to the patients, thus providing also a useful instrument for the behavioral re-education and monitoring over time.
