Pain Ratings of 200 Treated TMDs Patients

Objectives:To assess the impact of TMDs treatment on unprovoked pain in 10 body sites. Methods:Two hundred treatment records were selected at random from a population of 500 completed cases. Thirty-two males and 168 females with an average age of 39.7, ( S.D. 14.46) comprized the sample. Pain was rated by the patients prior to treatment, next to last visit and last visit. Patients rated their pain at each site for the week prior to filling out a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS).Each VAS ranged zero (no pain)to 20 points (pain as bad as it can be). The 10 sites rated by the VASs were 1) TMJoint, 2)Click, 3)Headache, 4) Face Pain, 5)Ear Pain, 6)Ear Blocking/ Stuffiness, 7)Arm Pain, 8)Neck Pain, 9) Upper Back Pain and 10) Lower Back Pain.Results:Using a global pain rating (total points for 10 sites), 31 of 200 patients were no better or worse than entry level pain. Repeated Measures ANOVA (F=132.2, p<0.000001)showed that mean entry level pain 47.46 reduced significantly to the next to last visit 28.89 and the last visit pain 22.97 was significantly less than the next to last visit mean pain. Ten dependent t-tests compared pre-treatment pain vs. last day of treatment for the pain sites. The Bonferroni convention placed the significance level at 0.005. All 10 sites showed a significant reduction in pain <0.0001 except arm pain which had a p<0.005. Conclusions: Treatment of TMDs results in pain reduction in the stomatognathic system as well as in areas of the body not usually regarded as associated with TMDs.