Prevalence and severity of incisal and occlusal tooth wear in an adult Swedish population.

The material consisted of 585 randomly selected dentate individuals from the community of Jönköping, Sweden, who in 1983 reached the age of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 years. The degree of incisal or occlusal wear was evaluated for each single tooth in accordance with the following criteria: 0 = no wear or negligible wear of enamel; 1 = obvious wear of enamel or wear through the enamel to dentin in single spots; 2 = wear of dentin up to one-third of the crown height; 3 = wear of dentin more than one-third of the crown height and/or excessive wear of tooth restorative material. Among the 20-year-olds 35% of the subjects had no or slight incisal or occlusal wear. The corresponding figures for the 30- to 80-year age groups were 20%, 32%, 18%, 14%, 26%, and 23%, respectively. For the age groups 20-80 years, the percentage of teeth with incisal or occlusal wear in accordance with criteria 1-3 was 13%, 20%, 16%, 24%, 23%, 23%, and 23%, respectively. Men presented more teeth with wear than women, the difference being significant for all age groups except the 20- and 60-year-olds. Among the 20-year-olds 6% had one or more teeth with wear scored 2. Among subjects aged 30 and 70 years 10% and 31%, respectively, showed tooth wear with score 2. Wear with score 3 was only found in 2% of the total population. There was an increase in the number of teeth with incisal or occlusal wear with age. With increasing age, there was also a change in distribution of wear within the dentition.