Finnish researchers have developed a portable electroencephalogram capable of accurately measuring the severity of sleep bruxism at home.
Having “grinding teeth” during sleep: maybe you are concerned. Affecting approximately 8% of the adult population and up to 14% of children, sleep bruxism is characterized by the clenching or grinding of the teeth during the night, which can cause various disorders such as premature wear of the teeth, jaw pain and headaches. Sometimes teeth grinding can be so loud that it disturbs the sleep of others in the same room.
While stress and anxiety are believed to promote bruxism, the actual causes of this disorder remain unknown. And for good reason: there is currently no method for assessing the severity of bruxism that is reliable, precise, cost-effective and sufficiently accessible.
Existing treatments, such as wearing an occlusal plate, focus on the symptoms and not on the causes. As for electronic devices designed to measure bruxism, including polysomnography, they are generally expensive and only available in centers for the evaluation and treatment of sleep disorders.
A tool to better understand sleep bruxism
To better get to the root of the problem and thus improve the diagnosis of “grinding teeth”, researchers from the University of Eastern Finland and the Kuopio University Hospital in Finland may have found the solution. Together, they developed a set of screen-printed emergency electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes that can quickly detect bruxism at home with clinical-like signal quality.
In an article published in the journal Sleep and Breathingthey claim that the diagnostic accuracy of the electrode array is comparable to that of conventional polysomnography and other bioelectrical measurements performed by healthcare professionals.
In total, the researchers measured the effectiveness of their EEG with 101 patients suffering from bruxism. In 9 out of 10 cases, the recordings made at home were of good quality. Only one recording failed due to problems with the electrode set.
For Tomi Miettinen, PhD student at the University of Eastern Finland, “The electrode set is particularly well suited to recordings which are more demanding in accurately assessing sleep bruxism activity over a period of several nights. As a tool, the electrode array has the potential to increase our understanding of sleep bruxism, which could lead to more effective methods for managing, and even treating, sleep bruxism,” he concludes.
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