Chronic orofacial pain

Abstract

Chronic orofacial pain (COFP) is an umbrella erm used to describe painful regional syndromes with a hronic, unremitting pattern. This is a convenience term, imilar to chronic daily headaches, but is of clinically uestionable significance: syndromes that make up COFP require individually tailored diagnostic approaches and treatment. Herein we describe the three main categories of COFP: musculoskeletal, neurovascular, and neuropathic. For many years, COFP and headache have been looked upon asdiscrete entities. However, we propose the concept that because COFP and headaches share underlying pathophysiological mechanisms, clinical characteristics, and neurovascular anatomy, they should be classified together.