Is there an association between occlusion and periodontal destruction?: Only in limited circumstances does occlusal force contribute to periodontal disease progression.

Abstract

Examining the long-standing controversy about the role of occlusion in periodontal disease is a delightful look back at more than 100 years of periodontal theory and practice. The list of authors who have written on this topic in the past century reads like a “Who's Who” of some of the brightest minds in dentistry, and the debate has endured through several defined eras in the history of the specialty of periodontics. From the days when periodontics was dominated by those initially trained as pathologists, through the period when the specialty was led by master clinicians headquartered at certain universities, through an era characterized by meticulously controlled human and animal studies conducted both in the United States and abroad, up to the current period of evidence-based therapy, the debate has persisted. It is a reminder that even in this modern era, dentistry still is very much an art as well as a science.