Contact Selection Inaccuracy when Interpreting Articulating Paper Marks

What is it about?

This recently published study entitled “Clinician Accuracy when Subjectively Interpreting Articulating Paper Markings1” has reported that when 295 dentists observed articulating paper markings to choose high and low force occlusal contacts, they chose incorrect contacts 77-95% of the time, when basing their selections on the appearance characteristics of the paper markings. These reported results question the widely believed principles that paper mark size describes occlusal force reliably.

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Why is it important?

The Results support recently published articulating paper mark studies that found no correlation between articulating paper mark size and applied occlusal load, revealing that clinicians will make numerous occlusal contact selection errors when observing the shapes and sizes of differing articulating paper marks. This means the quality of patient occlusal care is greatly compromised when dentists rely on Subjective Interpretation principles that are unfounded scientifically.