The legacy that declan anderson left for toothwear patients

It was with sadness that I read the obituary for Declan John Anderson, who passed away, aged 95, on Easter Day 2016.¹ He was, according to his Obituary, best known for his work on the sensory mechanisms relating to pain from human dentine, with this work advising us that the sensitivity was due to displacement of the contents of the dentinal tubules. Having graduated at Guy's in 1942, he gained a Chair at Bristol and formed a very successful group there.

However, it was a development of his work on recording masticatory forces in humans during natural chewing that brought his name to my attention.² It was probably one of Declan's less famous papers at the time, but it paved the way for a significant change in the way that dentists who read his work viewed occlusal changes. I did not read the paper (published in 1962 in the Archives of Oral Biology) at the time of its publication (even I was too young for that!) and it sadly remained hidden in the archives of dental publishing for some time. In this particular work, in five human subjects, the occlusal surface of the right lower first molar was raised by means of a removable metal cap of 0.5 mm thickness, this being a replica of the occlusal surface of the chosen tooth. It was worn continuously without discomfort for 23–41 days. Immediately after insertion of the cap, the subjects were unable to make contact anywhere with the jaws clenched, except between the capped tooth and its antagonists. He used a mini transducer (which was extremely innovative at the time) to record what happened, concluding that, within a short period, whole-arch centric occlusal contact became possible, and measurements between reference points on the capped tooth and antagonist and between other pairs of teeth showed that adjustments in tooth position took place‘. This paper, when viewed alongside the work of Bjorn Dahl, has made a fundamental change in the way that we can now treat toothwear, especially in anterior teeth.