What is Occlusal Harmony?

Occlusal harmony is a concept that sometimes gets forgotten. Sometimes, students get so involved with the process of complete dentistry that they forget the reason why they’re doing this in the first place. So let’s talk about occlusal harmony.

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Essentially, what we talk about is not just the teeth, but we talk about the whole masticatory system.

So the goal is to obviously get even contacts between the anterior and posterior teeth, but in a relationship so that the joints and muscles are very comfortable.

Most of your patients don’t have occlusal harmony, and the first inclination is to simply adjust the teeth or restore them. However, we need to take a closer look at what’s happening with the joints, as well as what is the indication of the muscles themselves.

Are the muscles uncomfortable, and if they are, is it because the teeth are not in occlusal harmony?

If you go through the checklist, you’ll always find yourself at the very end achieving that goal, that is, occlusal contacts in centric relation where the muscles are completely comfortable.

In addition to that, occlusal harmony also requires that we have anterior guidance.

The goal here, again, is to separate the back teeth during excursive movements. If you look at this whole concept, at the end of every checklist, your goal is to not only have occlusal harmony, but really to fulfill the five requirements of a stable occlusion.

That’s what we call occlusal harmony.