Bruxism and perform minimal grinding will also not show much tooth wear. Occlusal splints are usually employed as a treatment for bruxism, but they can also be of diagnostic use, e.g. to observe the presence or absence of wear on the splint after a certain period of wearing it at night. The most usual trigger in sleep bruxism that leads a person to seek medical or dental advice is being informed by sleeping partner of unpleasant grinding noises during sleep. The diagnosis of sleep bruxism is usually straightforward, and involves the exclusion of dental diseases, temporomandibular disorders, and the rhythmic jaw
Bruxism in research declined from over 60% of publications in the period 1966–86 to about 10% in the period 1997–2007. In the 1960s, a periodontist named Sigurd Peder Ramfjord championed the theory that occlusal factors were responsible for bruxism. Generations of dentists were educated by this ideology in the prominent textbook on occlusion of the time, however therapy centered around removal of occlusal interference remained unsatisfactory. The belief among dentists that occlusion and bruxism are strongly related is still widespread, however the majority of researchers now disfavor malocclusion as the main etiologic factor in favor of a more multifactorial, biopsychosocial model