What patients with Temporomandibular Disorders (TMDs) are telling us: a pilot study
Aurora Manfredini1, Dr. Alessandro Bracci2, Prof. Charles Greene3, Prof. Marco Ferrari4, Prof. Daniele Manfredini4
1 Department of Medical Biotechnologies, University of Siena, Siena, Italy and School of Dentistry, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy,
2 School of Dentistry, University of Padova, Padova, Italy,
3 Department of Orthodontics, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry, Chicago, Illinois, USA,
4 Department of Medical Biotechnologies, University of Siena, Siena, Italy
Objectives
Recent reports suggest that current standards of care for Temporomandibular Disorders (TMDs) are not uniformly being applied in dental offices, and as a result patients may need to see multiple professionals before receiving a correct diagnosis and treatment plan. The main purpose of this investigation is to collect information on the experiences of TMD patients in order to understand the current level of general knowledge and proposed therapies about these disorders.
Materials and Methods
A five-item questionnaire was designed by the authors and posted in a social network forum to anonymously recruit patients. The five questions regarded the time from pain onset, the number of professionals seen before receiving the diagnosis, the type of provided therapy, whether they were told by a healthcare giver that TMD problems are correlated with dental occlusion/mandibular position, and their experienced referral pattern.
Results
One-hundred-twenty-nine (N=129) patients answered the questionnaire. The most frequent answer was that patients were in pain for more than one year. More than half of responders reported that they visited two or more specialists other than their general dentist (59.4%). Just 8,5% of patients resolved their problems in some days. Almost twenty patients were proposed prosthodontics rehabilitation to correct their dental occlusion. This may be linked to the fact that the majority of patients were told by one or more healthcare providers that TMD problems are due to abnormalities of dental occlusion and mandibular position.
Conclusions
The results suggest that TMD management must be improved in order to reduce the number of patients that fail to solve the problem due to diagnostic delays. TMD patients are unnecessarily being delayed in finding correct diagnoses, and that they are at significant risk of receiving inappropriate care from their community dentists.