Effects of Temporomandibular Disorder on Masticatory Efficiency

"Two-color chewing gum mixing ability test was used to measure masticatory efficiency in the control group, before and after treatment in the experimental group.21 Commercial two-color chewing gum was used.The gum was left on the patient's tongue and he/she was asked to chew 20 times naturally.~After chewing, the gum was put in a transparent plastic bag and squeezed to 1 mm. Both sides of the sample were scanned at 300 dpi resolution on a desktop scanner (HP Deskjet, California, USA) in the same day to prevent the colors from deteriorating due to saliva. For each patient, two sides of scanned images were processed in ViewGum software (version 1.4, Dhal Software, Kifissia, Greece, www.dhal.com) using the method of Halozenitis et al. (2013).22 The value of VOH (variance of hue) was taken as the value of chewing activity. The highness of this value indicates low masticatory efficiency."