Over the past decades, I have been active as a clinician, teacher, and researcher in the domain or Orofacial Pain and Dysfunction. So far, on January 4, 2024, I have (co-)authored 517 peer-reviewed publications (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=lobbezoo+f&sort=date&size=200), the first of these being published in 1993. My publications cover a wide variety of topics related to orofacial pain/temporomandibular disorders (TMD), oral movement disorders/bruxism, and dental sleep disorders/obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and some of them touch upon the main topic of this congress, namely Occlusion. A PubMed search using the query “Lobbezoo F AND (occlus* OR orthodont*) yielded 97 papers. Of those, 46 were excluded: eight of them were Dutch reviews, while the other 38 excluded papers did not deal with occlusion but rather touched upon the topic lightly as part of, e.g., a methods’ description. The remaining 51 papers were all scrutinized for their possible contribution to sketching my personal perspective on the associations between bruxism and occlusion. Thus, 20 papers were finally included and will be summarized during this presentation. In short, despite the fact that dental practitioners and patients still believe in a role for occlusal factors in the etiology of bruxism, there is insufficient evidence to support that notion. Occlusal factors should thus be ignored in the management of bruxism. On the other hand, possible negative consequences of  bruxism do occur, notably mechanical tooth wear, fractures/failures of dental restorations and implants, and temporomandibular disorders (TMDs), although also for these associations convincing evidence is still lacking. In the light of all this, clinicians should make serious work of preventing occlusal dysesthesia, i.e., a preoccupation with the bite due to the belief that bruxism (and TMD) are caused by occlusal factors, as to maintain an as-high-as-possible oral health-related quality of life in their bruxing patients.

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