Written by: Dr. Abrar/ Hamdard Dental College Sometimes, a personal event of life affects you physically and in some cases regional events can also influence you physically, socially and mentally. That is exactly what happened to our region – Pakistan, after the big terrorist attacks in USA on 11th September 2001. Its was hard to imagine that the 9/11 events, could affect the dentition of Pakistan . But as a matter of fact, it did, in the long term. Its been more than 12 years now, when the 9/11 incident took place. After that some massive changes took place across the world. Similarly, our region was also affected. After 9/11, the “war on Terror” started, which eventually spread all the way to our neighboring country. The casualties and damages of this war encompassed the Tribal areas of Pakistan too. Whereby Pakistan became a front-line state in the war against terror. Thus, till date we are stuck in a “state of war” . There have been many long term effects of this war on the security and “Law & Order” conditions within Pakistan. It has directly affected the inflation rates in our country too. There was a sizeable increase in the incidents of kidnapping, ransom, extortion, mobile snatching and other unfair means of earning, due to economic pressures and unemployment among the common people. Target killing is also on the rise. This too increased the uncertainty in the average Pakistani's life and Pakistanis started to migrate in large numbers to various safer societies. Overall, there was a visible impact on the mental health of the Pakistani masses. Ultimately it increased the stress in our daily lives. This mental stress causes the people to clench and grind their teeth causing Myo-Facial Pain Dysfunction syndrome. This results in Attrition and erosion of teeth (besides causing increased gastric acidity) We conducted a study at the Hamdard Dental College in Karachi, during 2012 and 2013 on more than 100 patients who were suffering from MYO-Facial pain dysfunction syndrome and were basically excessive clenchers and grinders of teeth. This caused Head aches (tender temporalis), jaw pains (Tender masseter), TMJ pain (tender Capsule), Gum pain (lateral and medial pterigiod tender), neck pain and shoulder pain due to tenderness in these muscles. Tooth pain cases have also increased due to Occlusal Trauma. We can conclude by the following flow-chart that 9/11 has directly affected the dentition and surrounding tissue structure of our common people.
