Comparative evaluation of soft and hard splints in treatment of clenching disorder

The aim of this study was to compare the efficiency of soft and hard splints in treating patients with clenching.

In this clinical study, 26 patients with clenching disorder randomly divided to two equal group of treatment: hard and soft splint. The amount of masticatory muscle  pain and maximum mouth opening were measured at the delivery time and 3, 6, 9, and 12 weeks later by a blind examiner. Data were analyzed by independent T and repeated measure ANOVA  tests with significance level of p=0.05.

Hard and soft splints were resulted in significant reduction of masticatory muscle pain (hard: P<0.001, Soft: p<0.001) and increase in maximum opening (hard P<0.001, Soft p<0.003),  but there was no significant difference between them in pain relieving (P=0.848) and maximum opening (P=0.622).

This study showed that efficacy of hard and soft splints in treating patients with clenching is same.