Temporomandibular disorders and fibromyalgia: A narrative review

Abstract

Temporomandibular disorder (TMD) and fibromyalgia (FM) have some clinical characteristics in common, for instance the chronic evolution, the pathophysiology incompletely understood and a multifactorial genesis. The incidence and the relationship between TMD and FM patients are the aims of this review. A MEDLINE and PubMed search were performed for the key words “temporomandibular disorder” AND “fibromyalgia” from 2000 to present. A total of 19 papers were included in our review, accounting for 5449 patients. Ten studies, reporting a total of 4945 patients with TMD, showed that only 16.5% of these patients had diagnosis of FM, whereas 12 studies, reporting a total of 504 patients with FM, demonstrated that 77.0% of these patients had diagnosis of TMD. A comorbid relationship exists between TMD and FM. The complexity of both diseases shows the importance of a multimodal and interdisciplinary.