being diagnosed with the disease continues to rise ; and the number of patients has risen even more significantly in recent years ( Wieckiewicz et al ., 2014 , p . 4 ). More dentists are including questionnaires about sleep bruxism and diurnal bruxism on their health history , though that still produces flaws with diagnosing the problem . In their review , Kawakami et al . ( 2014 ) found a number of dentists including only one bruxismspecific question on their health history forms , resulting in defects in the data collected from the self-reported questionnaires ( p . 1 ). This formed concerns about specificity and homogeneity of the bruxism disease and measures to diagnose it ( Kawakami et al ., 2014 , p . 2 ). Following Kawakami et al ’ s ( 2014 ) study , six of his subject patients were unaware of the clenching and grinding motions they were involuntarily doing during the night prior to the study ( p . 7 ). These results show that that if patients are oblivious to the disorder they potentially have , making them aware could be the missing link to provide adequate research on bruxism . However , using questionnaires in comprehensive health history forms is the initial step in diagnosing sleep and awake bruxism . Dentists and physicians use this information along with a tooth-wear index – which classifies occlusal wear on teeth – and palpation examinations of the face and neck to determine progressions which may need further diagnosing .
Advanced apparatuses have been implemented in effectively diagnosing day and sleep bruxism . Swaminathan et al . ( 2014 ) expressed