Study of Gliding Tooth Contacts during Mastication

Abstract

Tooth gliding occurs frequently both in the opening (55.9%) and closing (60.5%) chewing strokes. The average glide length was 1 mm. Good occlusions could not be distinguished from poor occlusion on the basis of frequency and length of gliding contacts. The greater the component of lateral movement during the closing stroke, the greater the probability that gliding contacts would occur.