Tooth wear attrition

The term tooth wear is commonly used to describe the loss of tooth hard tissue due to non-carious causes [1], This encompasses a variety of both chemical and mechanical causes of both intrinsic and extrinsic origin. The term tooth wear is preferred over some of the more precise definitions of individual hard tissue loss mechanisms, because it acknowledges the fact that wear is usually a multifactorial process one mechanism may dominate, but the overall wear is commonly due to the interaction between two or more wear mechanisms. In dentistry, the terms erosion, abrasion, attrition and abfraction are widely used to describe particular mechanisms of hard tissue loss. 

The mechanisms of tooth wear fall into two distinct types those of chemical origin (e.g. erosion) and those of physical origin (e.g. abrasion, attrition). In any individual, both chemical and physical insults to the tooth hard tissue will be present in some form or other, so tooth wear is the combined effect of these insults. Despite the clear definition of a number of distinct tooth wear mechanisms, it is uncommon to find a single wear mechanism present in the... 

Several methods have been developed for quantifying dental fluorosis. The most commonly used method is Dean s index [49], which classifies fluorosis on a scale of 0 to 4 as follows class 0, no fluorosis class 1, very mild fluorosis (opaque white areas irregularly covering <25% of the tooth surface) class 2, mild fluorosis (white areas covering 25-50% of the tooth surface) class 3, moderate fluorosis (all surfaces affected, with some brown spots and marked wear on surfaces subject to attrition) and class 4, severe fluorosis (widespread brown stains and pitting). The average score of the two most severely affected teeth is used to derive the classification. Other commonly used methods to rate dental fluorosis include the Thylstrup-Fejerskov Index (TFI) [50] and the tooth surface... 

Attrition is the mechanical removal of hard tissue by direct contacts between teeth (either natural or restored) with no foreign substance intervening [5]. This mechanism causes wear by tooth-tooth contacts as well as by tooth-restoration, and indeed restoration-restoration contacts. The action of mastication and bruxism are known causes of attrition. In the field of tribology, the term abrasion refers to the loss of material from a surface by sliding, rubbing or scratching. Two-body abrasion refers to abrasion caused by two contacting surfaces in relative motion, i.e. the mechanism in dentistry that is described as attrition. Three-body abrasion refers to abrasion caused by surfaces in... 

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