The evaluation of facial, head, neck, and temporomandibular joint pain patients

Abstract

The purposes of this paper are to present an evaluation procedure for patients with signs and symptoms of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain dysfunction syndrome (PDS) and to describe the findings of the evaluation procedure on 12 patients with TMJ PDS. The evaluation emphasizes the collection of subjective and objective data. Records from 12 patients with facial, head, and neck pain were reviewed. The most frequent symptoms were: headache (100%), neckache (83.3%), and ear pain (58.3%). The most frequent signs were: muscle tenderness (100%) and mandibular deviation on opening (66.7%). Subjects with lateral pterygoid muscle tenderness had digastric muscle tenderness as well. Subjects with medical pterygoid muscle tenderness had masseter and hyoid muscle tenderness. Masseter muscle tenderness was strongly related to sternocleidomastoid and mylohyoid muscle tenderness and neckache.