Appliance therapy

Bite splints

The staring point for determining the need for a bite appliance is evaluation and history. Some patients require no treatment or appliance. Some patients can be served well with a night guard that protects the teeth. Patients that are dealing with continued pain need to have a functional analysis. We accomplish this with a series of questions and an appliance designed by Dr. Joh Kois. The use of a deprgrammer is valuable because we can erase the memory of the muscles and achieve a predictable, repeatable bite. The deprogrammer has been valuable in analysis for those that cannot tolerate the appliance as well as those that gained instant relief. For the rest, we can mount models of the teeth to the repeatable bite and simulate a bite adjustment (equilibration) prior to any treatment directly to the teeth. The appliance serves as a guide during the bite adjustment as well. This is also valuable in discovering when other treatments may be needed to correct the problem.