Disorders
Temporomandibular joint disorders is also referred to as TMJ (this can be slightly confusing) or more commonly as TMD. The disorders are a group of complex medical problems involving the jaw joint and a complete dental and medical evaluation is often necessary and recommended to evaluate patients with suspected TMJ disorders which fall into three main categories:
- Myofascial pain dysfunction syndrome, involves pain or discomfort in the muscle that control jaw movement. This is regarded as the most common.
- Degenerative joint diease, such as rheumatoid arthritis or oestoarthritis including inflammatory joint disorders.
- Dissarangment, this type includes dislocated jaw, displaced disc or injury to the condyle, which causes pressure and stretching of the sensory nerves and inflicting pain.
Patients suffering from TMD may have one or more of these conditions, as a result they may develop other symptoms such as chronic fatigue, sleep disturbances, or other conditions that affects other muscles of the body, called fibromyalgia.
A dissarangment condition can be seen by the following video compared to a normal pathological joint as previously seen. From the video the articular disc can be seen to be displaced medially and when the jaw is protruded the condylar head of the mandible is locked into an extreme anterior postion where it can be lodgged into place there leading to a dislocated jaw:
Symptoms may include:
- Sinus type headaches
- Bruxism
- Tooth pain
- Pain in joints/teeth
- Buzzing or ringing in ears
- Ear pain
- Neck and back pain
- Jaw popping
- Vertigo
However, these are to name but a few symptoms as there is no general rule by which TMD symptoms can be diagnosed. The symptoms seems to worsen or ease with time in people suffering from TMD and in the majority of cases people suffer relatively mild forms of the disorders and their symptoms improve significantly or even dissappear, within weeks.
By far the most common symptom is headaches, which when misdiagnosed can be mistaken for migraines. If this is the case the patient often recieves pain relief mediciation which can help in temporary pain relief, but does not help in resolving the problem.