Introduction to Teeth - Dental Biotribology - page 9

Fig. 1.5 Palatal view of
maxillary teeth of a
16-year-old female who had
drunk a liter of “diet”
carbonated drinks a day for
the past 2 years. There is
marked tooth surface loss
affecting the anterior [ 10 ]
tooth erosion was published in 1892 by Darby [ 39 ]. In the middle of the twentieth
century, some investigations on dental erosion were reported due to atmospheric
contamination from the rapid development of the chemical industry [ 40 - 43 ].
A large-scale examination on hundreds of acid workers was performed by Ten
Bruggen Cate [ 44 ]. He showed that the dentin was affected, that the degree of ero-
sion progressed during the period of the survey, and that erosion superimposed
upon attrition predisposed to a more severe loss of tooth structure than either
operating alone.
The irreversible loss of dental hard tissue induced by acids is accompanied by a
demineralization and softening of the tooth surface. This dematerialized surface is
more prone to abrasion through mechanical friction such as toothbrushing, as stud-
ied by Davis and Winter [ 45 ] and Attin et al. [ 46 ] However, Featherstone [ 47 ]
showed that human saliva had the capacity to reharden enamel that was demineral-
ized in the form of an incipient carious lesion, suggesting that saliva assists the
repair of surface demineralization caused by acidic substances. In 1998, Edwards
et al. [ 48 ] recommended that people should avoid brushing their teeth for at least
one hour after having a soft drink in order to minimize tooth substance loss by tooth
abrasion. However, Jaeggi et al. [ 49 ] indicated a period of 1 h for an exposure to
saliva was not sufficient to reestablish the abrasion of the enamel of eroded surface
as compared to the uneroded. A similar conclusion was obtained by Attin et al. [ 50 ],
that the abrasion resistance of softened enamel increases with the length of the rem-
ineralization period, and at least 1 h should be allowed before toothbrushing after an
erosive attack. Further investigations confirmed that the remineralization was also
sufficiently long in the case of exposed dentin areas.
The effect of water fluoridation upon dental erosion in the UK has been investi-
gated by Bardsley et al. [ 51 ]. They found that children in nonfluoridated districts
were 1.5 times more likely to have smooth surface wear compared with children in
fluoridated districts. They recommended that fluoridation and the use of fluoridated
toothpaste twice a day provided added protection from dental erosion. Devlin et al.
[ 52 ] measured the surface hardness of human enamel exposed to Coca-Cola and
artificial saliva. Similar results were obtained by Tantbirojn et al. [ 53 ]: The hardness