Longitudinal 3D Study of Anterior Tooth Wear from Adolescence to Adulthood in Modern Humans

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Tooth wear is the loss of tooth substance during everyday functioning by means other than dental caries. It is expected at a certain level in every person, and it increases with age. In the last decades, due to the increased life expectancy and high patient demands, it has become an important problem modern dentistry has to face. However, the average amount of tooth wear among individuals remains controversial. The purpose of this clinical study was to precisely detect the extent of anterior tooth wear over a thirteen-year period, from adolescence to adulthood. The present study revealed the very high tooth wear occurrence in the population already at early adulthood and showed that wear monitoring at an individual level is important for dentists to enable the better understanding of the problem and allow timely targeted interventions for patients in need. These might be preventive, such as the prescription of mouth guards to limit grinding and the cessation of harmful habits that lead to tooth wear, or interceptive, such as the restoration of the lost tooth substance to stop the progress of the condition and improve esthetics and function. ABSTRACT: In modern humans, tooth wear can easily be observed as a loss of tooth substance, but its precise measurement is problematic. The aim of this longitudinal cohort study was to determine the precise amount of occlusal tooth wear in the anterior permanent dentition from adolescence to adulthood. Corresponding tooth crowns from serial 3D digital dental models of 72 individuals were best fit-approximated by applying novel, highly accurate 3D superimposition methods. The superimposed crowns were simultaneously sliced on intact structures, and the differences in the volumes of the subsequent occlusal parts were calculated. Over a thirteen-year period, there was an average loss of anterior occlusal surfaces of 1.58 mm(3) per tooth. Tooth surface loss in at least one tooth was higher than 1 mm(3) in 93.1% of the human subjects. Tooth wear severity differed by sex and tooth type, with males showing higher values versus females and upper canines versus other anterior teeth. The study revealed the endemic occurrence of occlusal anterior tooth wear, highlighting the need for monitoring of the condition in the population to identify high-risk patients and enable timely interventions. The novel methods applied here on 3D digital models are recommended for this.