Temporomandibular Disorders - Science topic

After surgery, Make sure to follow your dentist’s instructions which surely can make a significant difference. This might include avoiding hard foods, practicing gentle jaw exercises, and taking prescribed medications to reduce inflammation and pain. Regular follow-up appointments are crucial to monitor your healing process.Home care remedies can effectively manage mild TMJ symptoms. Applying ice or heat packs, eating soft foods, and performing gentle jaw stretches can provide relief. Over-the-counter pain relievers may also help.For more persistent pain, your dentist might prescribe stronger medications. Muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatory drugs, and pain relievers can reduce discomfort and inflammation.Physical therapy can be beneficial for TMJ disorders. Therapists can guide you through exercises to strengthen jaw muscles, improve flexibility, and reduce pain.If home remedies and medications don’t help with your symptoms, it’s time to see a specialist. Oral surgeons or TMJ experts can offer advanced treatments like mouth guards, injections, or even surgery if needed.TMJ disorders after dental implant surgery can be concerning, but learning about the causes, symptoms, and treatment options can help you manage and prevent these problems. You can reduce your risk of TMJ problems by carefully planning your surgery and following post-operative care instructions. If your symptoms persist, you should seek professional help. Our experienced team at LDNYC is ready to help you achieve a healthy, comfortable smile.

While stabilization splints are primarily designed to address dental issues, there has been some research examining their potential effects on respiratory parameters, especially in individuals with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and those without OSA. However, it's important to note that the research in this area is limited, and findings are not entirely consistent.

Dear sir, diseases such as Periodontitis, surely have negative effect on the occlusal pressure and will show statistically significant difference in Tek-scan reading in normal patient and patient with periodontitis. However, diagnosing periodontitis only on the basis of occlusal analysis wont be possible. Since, periodontitis is an inflammatory disease and its diagnosis is based on clinical findings such as changes in color, consistency of gingiva, pocket formation and more specifically clinical attachment loss. Depending on the severity of periodontitis, there could be varying degree of underlying bone loss that would affect the tooth's capacity to bear occlusal forces.

Hence, you can compare cases of severe full mouth periodontitis, with bone loss in multipe teeth with those with mild to moderate periodontitis and also keep healthy periodontium as control group to prove that with increasing in severity of periodontitis, the occlusal load bearing capacity is affected.

I hope i was albe to clear you query, let me know if you want to ask something more. We have done a similar study in our department and have published an e-book on the same. Following is the link for same.

Dear Dr. Higdon,

Thank you very much for your comment and interesting thoughts on the subject.

First of all I would like to respond to your question – for whom the term TMD brings most problems? In my opinion the problem affects all mentioned groups – patients, clinicians and academics. Researchers use the term TMD very often in places where generalization is needed – title, abstract, conclusions. However, in the texts it is usually specified in the material and methods section what form/s of TMD was/were investigated (specific diagnoses e.g. according to RDC/TMD or DC/TMD). Therefore readers know what autor/s meant while referring to term TMD.

In my opinion, the use of the term TMD may be justified while multiple diagnoses are included into the study. Then title using the term TMD clearly shows that the study is about the group of disorders/clinical problems. Contrarily, when only one specific diagnosis or one clinical problem (e.g. pain) is included into the study then one should avoid using general term TMD and use more specific description. Unfortunately this is not common practice and in this terms may bring confusion, especially when read by person not well oriented in the topic. I think that problems of clinicians and patients are secondary to problem of academics who give bad example with the ease of use the term TMD while having so different meanings in mind (TMD as a group o clinical problems related to TMJs and masticatory muscles, TMD as a chronic pain condition, TMD as a mainly TMJ problem etc.).

It is interesting that you compare the term TMD to terms like „knee disorder” – non-specified problem of a specific anatomical site. Such terms ale very useful in clinical practice especially in diagnostic process. However, in feel that TMD sounds more like „femorotibial disorder” instead of „knee disorder”. I also fell like the term TMD is about to show complexity of the TMJ and muscle problems and refer to interactions between specific TMD diagnoses. But isn’t it the same with the knee or every other joint?? Aren’t muscles affected by joint problems? Therefore, I think that we should refer to TMJ problems the same way as orthopedist refer to knee problems, calling them knee disorders instead of „femorotibial dysfunction”.

I honestly think that life without the term TMD is possible and would save us from tons of confusion and effort trying to understand what somebody means saying TMD.

I personally try to refer directly to specific clinical problem – orofacial pain, headache, limited mouth opening, sounds in the TMJs or anatomically oriented problems – masticatory muscles problem, neck muscles problem, TMJ problem. For example, it is much better for me when somebody tells me „I have patient with headache and masticatory muscle problem” than „I have patient with TMD”. The first sentence is very informative, while the second seems like waste of time.

In conclusion, I think that the example should come from academics and that is why I posted this question here on RG. If we would start using more clinically understandable terms more often then clinicians knowledge about problems related to TMJ and muscles of mastication will also increase, from which patients will greatly benefit.

Of course I would like to hear some voices of disagreement with my opinion and I will be happy to further discuss on this topic.

Good Morning.

As mentioned the cost of the procedure is not at all costly. I charge about $500 for the treatment using this technology. It depends which country we work in.

You can google out for my articles on ICAGD in google scholar

Regards

Prafulla Thumati. 

Dear José,

The evidence isn't entirely clear and show controversial results. However we know that the global posture deviations cause body adaptation and realignment, which may interfere with the organization and function of the temporomandibular joint. Indeed, different researchs show that the methodology applied will be the differential factor of your experiment. On the one hand, the insufficient number of articles considered of excellent methodological quality is a factor that hinders the acceptance or denial of this association. In the other hand, others researchs show that results suggest a close relationship between body posture and temporomandibular disorder, though it is not possible to determine whether postural deviations are the cause or the result of the disorder.  Anyway, I send to you some papers that can clarify your ideas!

I hope this help you.

DTR is very fast!  about 30% of the patients begin feeling relief on visit one BEFORE THEY LEAVE THE OFFICE!  I do nothing to the muscles other than measure them.  Many times you can see the exact correction that reduces muscle activity.  I no longer build splints or night guards.  I will make a fixed orthotic if I am making an increase in VDO.  In my experience once the structural issue is corrected (the teeth) the functional (muscles) issues take care of themselves.  Correcting an unbalanced bite does help, but timing trumps the balance of force issues almost every time.

According to Manfredini  the literature shows that TMD are not often related to specific occlusal conditions, and they also do not have any detectable relationships with head and body posture. The use of clinical and instrumental approaches for assessing body posture is not supported by the wide majority of the literature, mainly because of wide variations in the measurable variables of posture. In conclusion, there is no evidence for the existence of a predictable relationship between occlusal and postural features, and it is clear that the presence of TMD pain is not related with the existence of measurable occluso-postural abnormalities. Therefore, the use of instruments and techniques aiming to measure purported occlusal, electromyographic, kinesiographic or posturographic abnormalities cannot be justified in the evidence-based TMD practice.

Manfredini, D., Castroflorio, T., Perinetti, G., & Guarda-Nardini, L. (2012). Dental occlusion, body posture and temporomandibular disorders: where we are now and where we are heading for. Journal of Oral Rehabilitation, 39(6), 463–471. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2842.2012.02291.x

Kind regards

Ulrich Kritzler

have a look Tanne K. Current status of temporomandibular joint disorders and the therapeutic system derived from a series of biomechanical , histological , and biochemical studies. APOS Trends Orthod. 2015;5(January):4–21.

One answer is  8-12 microns -Riis and Giddon

Other workers in this field that you should check were were Anderson and Picton