Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 1996 Apr;24(2):152-8.
doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0528.1996.tb00833.x.

The tooth wear index: a flawed epidemiological tool in an ageing population group

M A Donachie  1 , A W Walls
Affiliations
Review

The tooth wear index: a flawed epidemiological tool in an ageing population group

M A Donachie et al. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol. 1996 Apr.

Abstract

With a greater number of people living longer and tending to retain many natural teeth, the problems associated with tooth wear are likely to place greater demands upon dental professionals in the future. Several attempts have been made to develop an index to measure tooth wear, for use at both the individual and population level. A review of these indices is undertaken, and difficulties experienced with the tooth wear index (TWI) of Smith & Knight (1984) in a large adult dental health survey is discussed. In the elderly population the scoring criteria of the TWI proved to be difficult to apply without additional qualification, and in cases of extreme wear a five-point ordinal scale was found to be inadequate to describe the range of wear observed. The concept of "pathological" levels of wear proposed by the TWI are challenged and modification to the index suggested for use among the elderly population.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

LinkOut - more resources