Clinical decision of centric relation.

Centric relation (CR) was used in the complete dentures for edentulous jaws firstly. Then, CR was gradually applied in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of dentate jaws. Regarding the application of CR in dentate jaws, there are many doubts about its rationality. For instance, should CR be the core of diagnosis and treatment of temporomandibular disorders? Should CR be used as the jaw position of establishing occlusion in occlusal reconstruction? Should CR serve as the target jaw position in orthodontic treatment? Meanwhile, varieties of CR clinical applications are objective. According to the existing evidence, this paper summarizes the applicable conditions of several main clinical situations with little controversy. We preliminarily put forward the decision tree for the clinical application of CR, which can be used as a reference in clinical practice.