Role of thermography in assessment of myogenous temporomandibular disorders-a systematic review

Abstract

The main objective of this review was to identity the usage of thermography in diagnosis of orofacial pain. Thermography is a method of measurement of skin temperature distribution on the body over a given period of time. Hence using the skin temperature, an advantages result can be obtained in identifying diseased condition in orofacial region. This article highlights the basics of thermography as a diagnostic tool in dentistry in identifying orofacial pain. PUBMED and Google Scholar were searched to identify all the clinical trials which evaluated the use of thermography in diagnosis of orofacial pain. The included studies involved 6 clinical trials. From all the included studies, an advantages result was obtained by using thermography in assessing orofacial disorders between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. All the findings obtained, suggest that thermography can be helpful in evaluating myogenous temporomandibular disorder and can be used as a clinical screening method and for improving diagnostic accuracy. In few studies, the sensitivity of thermography in the diagnosis of orofacial disorder is low, but has high specificity which helped in evaluation of orofacial disorder and is therefore applicable to patients with orofacial pain. Thermography benefits by locating the temperature difference between symptomatic and asymptomatic facial region thus indicating its aid in diagnoses of orofacial disorder. However due to limited evidence and short term studies, it is recommended that more of long term studies with large sample size should be emphasised to use thermography as routine diagnostic tool in identifying orofacial disorder.