Effects on dental structure and stress bruxism: a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: grinding of the teeth during sleep or wakefulness is known as bruxism. It has been determined that this parafunctional disease is caused by other psychological conditions such as stress and anxiety. Objective: to review what variables may be causing the disease and what treatments are suggested to control it. Method: a search for the topic was carried out in the following databases from 2017 to April 2022: Neurofrontal through PubMed; MEDLINE via PubMed; SciELO via Google Scholar; Repository of the University of Guayaquil through Google Scholar. The search strategy used was: (Bruxism) AND (treatment OR effects) AND (stress). All texts with potentially relevant studies for the execution of the systematic review were analyzed and a table was created for the evaluation and comparison of the results obtained in the studies. These studies should have presented an association between bruxism at different levels of intensity with psychological diseases such as stress or derivatives of it. Results: the medications that were most effective were those that function as facial muscle relaxants, in order to also reduce the damage that exists in the teeth due to the power of the bite during episodes of stress. An improvement is also shown in patients who used serotonin-elevating medications, thus hinting at the permanent correlation between stress and bruxism within jaw conditions and easy muscle fatigue. Conclusion: there is a permanent correlation between bruxism and stress, which complicates the treatment of one condition without controlling the other; furthermore, without control of the disease.