Dental occlusal wear and degenerative disease of the temporomandibular joint: a correlational study utilizing skeletal material from a contemporary population

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Abstract
Forty crania and mandibles with intact dentition exceeding twenty-six teeth and bilaterally intact condyle-fossa apparatus were evaluated for attrition and degenerative joint disease. The skeletal specimens all represent a twentieth-century contemporary American population from the Atkinson Skull Collection at the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry. While 23.1% of this sample exhibited some degree of erosive osseous degenerative wear involving the condyle or articular fossa and 76.3% exhibited occlusal tooth wear, no significant correlation between the degree of attrition and the severity of degenerative joint disease could be documented.