Bite splint for tinnitus | Bite splint

Bite splint for tinnitus

20% of the trigger for tinnitus is in the cervical spine. Due to the interplay of chewing muscles and jaw joint, many functional disorders are also transmitted to the cervical spine and vice versa. Especially in patients with craniomandibular dysfunction, i.e. a proven temporomandibular joint disease, the bite splint leads to muscle relaxation.

If the reason for the tinnitus is a tension of the cervical and thoracic spine muscles, such a relaxation splint can remedy the tinnitus. As mentioned above, the reason for tinnitus is only 20% in the muscular head area, which means that not every tinnitus can be treated with a splint. Nevertheless, it should be taken into consideration during the therapy. Attention: In rare cases, tinnitus can also occur through a bite splint. The reason for this is a muscular malposition of the chewing muscles, if the splint is incorrectly ground in and the muscles cramp.

What to do in case of pain or pressure from the bite splint?

A bite splint should not act like a brace and actively move the teeth, but can still act as a retainer after orthodontic treatment. Because the teeth are constantly shifting in the course of life and are kept in shape by the splint and thus counteract the migration process, pain can occur. In case of severe pain, you should consult your dentist.

The dentist can then make a new splint with the current tooth position. If the splint only presses on a single tooth, this tooth can be ground free in the dental practice so that the splint does not lie too tightly against the tooth. The splint can also press on the gums.

Maybe it is too long, or small plastic tips still stick out. The dentist should remove these spots and polish them smooth. If you have the feeling that the splint is crooked and the opposing teeth are not evenly supported, the correct occlusion of the teeth must be re-ground.

If all teeth do not bite evenly on the splint, some teeth will get more force and others less. The temporomandibular joint is not loaded equally to the sides, so that pain occurs again. On the other hand the load is too great for some teeth. The teeth that are less strongly supported can grow longer (elongation) and thus change the dentition over a longer period of time.

Fabrication of the occlusal splint

The manufacturing process of such a crunching or biting splint is relatively simple and is also covered by the health insurance company in most cases. The dentist takes an impression of the jaw with alginate. Alginate is a frequently used elastic-irreversible impression material in dentistry, which is extracted from seaweed and seaweed.

Now we have an individual impression of the patient’s jaw which will be filled in with plaster by a dental technician in order to make a model. Now there are different possibilities to create a bite splint. Either by means of thermoforming foils, hot and cold-curing polymers or light-curing plastics.

The procedure using thermoforming foils is the most commonly used, as it is the easiest and quickest to perform and the material most likely to meet the desired requirements. The occlusal splint should be biocompatible, last long, not damage the existing teeth and tissue, and be appropriate to the benefit (absorbing forces, etc. ).