Pain of Temporomandibular Disorders: From Etiology to Management
1Wroclaw Medical University, Wroclaw, Poland
2National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
3Technische Universitat Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Pain of Temporomandibular Disorders: From Etiology to Management
Description
Currently, temporomandibular disorders (TMD) refer to the causes responsible for the impaired function of the temporomandibular joints and the associated neuromuscular system, which may provoke pain and dysfunction of the masticatory system. The term TMD is not a diagnosis but rather a broad term that contains a number of disease entities, such as pain in masticatory muscles and temporomandibular joints, headache, and disturbances in jaw movements with or without sounds while opening and closing the mouth. TMD is the second most common musculoskeletal pain condition after chronic low back pain. Temporomandibular disorders have become a widespread social and economic problem for which annual spending only in North America is estimated at billions of US dollars. In recent years, there has been a very large and varied development of research focused into etiology, epidemiology, systematization, and management of TMD. Therefore, it is important to understand that only accurate and broad sensed explanation of etiopathogenesis and the unification of taxonomy provide an exhaustive understanding of the TMD.
The special issue aims at collecting multidisciplinary approaches on the pain of temporomandibular disorders in basic and clinical aspects. Current views included in this issue will hopefully allow us to assess a perspective of the TMD and to develop and familiarize ourselves with new researches related to multidisciplinary viewpoints.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Basic research on TMD pain origin
- Clinical research on TMD pain origin
- TMD pain epidemiology with or without financial aspects
- TMD pain diagnostics (especially with clinical assessment of diagnostic tool validity)
- Current approaches to multidisciplinary management of TMD pain
- Conservative methods of TMD pain management
- Invasive methods of TMD pain management
- Drug therapy in TMD pain management
- Dental management of TMD pain
- Comorbidities in TMD pain
- Diseases entities which can affect TMD pain