This morning I was at the dentist for the final fitting and cementing of my crown following a root canal a few weeks ago. Yay. But while they were checking my bite to see how the crown fit over the tooth, they did something I’ve never experienced at the dentist before. The dentist (and on another occasion, his assistant) asked me to click my teeth together while he put his fingers on the front face of my teeth.
I immediately suspected this was sound-related, and so when I had the opportunity I asked him about it. He said he was listening and feeling for the clicking sound because inconsistencies in the sound and vibration coming from each tooth can reveal unevenness in a person’s bite. As much as I think it would be really cool if this were at all reliable, I have my doubts—at the very least I feel like you’d need a pretty trained ear to actually know what to listen for and distinguish the differences.
Maybe I’m wrong. Lucky for me, he also used that little dyed piece of paper you bite on that colors the high points of the biting surface of a tooth. Seems a little more straightforward to me…