Volume 22 - Issue 3

This is an invitation to participate in clinical research on temporomandibular disorders from the convenience of your own office. The project, NIDCR’s TMJ Implant Registry and Repository (TIRR), uses state-of-the-art digital record technology to provide clinicians with a comprehensive clinic and research data management system for TMD and TMJ implants.
This system was developed to help address the significant pain and disability in patients who had inter-positional TMJ disk implants. In 1992, the FDA ...

Some of you, like me, are old enough to remember a hit song by the Kingston Trio entitled, Where Have All The Flowers Gone? The first stanza of the lyrics goes:
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Picked by young girls every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
A similar scenario could ...

1ABSTRACT: Evidence has been accumulating linking subjective tinnitus to the somatosensory system. Most subjective tinnitus patients can change the psychoacoustic attributes of their tinnitus with forceful head and neck contractions. This study assessed the significance of such somatic modulation of tinnitus by testing nonclinical subjects. Like tinnitus patients, about 80% of nonclinical subjects, who had ongoing tinnitus at the time of testing (whether or not they were previously aware of it), could modulate their tinnitus ...

ABSTRACT: Airway orthotic therapy, considered mainstream in the treatment of sleep-disordered breathing, has been demonstrated to normalize both structure and function of the pathological airway through manipulation of mandibular posture. Although effective, the literature reports a variable rate of success and no validated candidacy selection protocol. Acoustic reflection has been used to evaluate and document the upper airway and its dynamics with and without an orthotic in place. This paper will discuss the use of ...

ABSTRACT: Pain and joint noises associated with temporomandibular joint (TMJ) internal derangement are often treated by using an intra-oral splint. This study evaluated whether an anterior repositioning splint (AR splint) could be more effective in the treatment of these symptoms than a full-arch maxillary stabilization splint (FAMS splint), because of its capability to re-establish immediately the normal condyle/disk relationship. The authors treated 40 patients (average age 16.8; range 8.0-24.0) with confirmed ...

ABSTRACT: While bioelectronic instruments have been available for nearly 30 years to assist dentists in day-to-day evaluations of patients’ masticatory systems, little guidance has been published to support physiological norms or ideals. An electronic questionnaire was developed and administered to an international group of dentists familiar with the use of bioelectronic instrumentation. Respondents were asked to provide feedback on the norms or ideal parameters of jaw movement, masticatory muscle function with electromyography, and joint sounds ...

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to investigate for difference in the prevalence of mood disorders between patients with different painful temporomandibular disorders (TMD). After a sample size necessary for the study was calculated, 60 patients with a painful TMD were selected and divided into the following groups: myofascial pain (n=20), temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain (n=18), combined myofascial and TMJ pain (n=22). Two distinct comparison groups were selected: subjects with a ...

ABSTRACT: Sleep-related phenomena or disorders, including snoring and tooth grinding, can be  investigated using polysomnography. This method, however, generates large amounts of synchronically recorded data that are often analyzed visually with subjective interpretation The purpose of this study was to minimize the need for subjective evaluation by developing a computer program for analysis of EMG data linked with polysomnographic recordings in a standardized and semi-automatic way. The selected algorithm differs from the Root Mean Square ...

ABSTRACT: This study tested the reproducibility of visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores to measure changes in masseter muscle pain evoked by maximally tolerable mechanical stimulation over a short time period in healthy subjects. This study also evaluated gender differences in reproducibility of VAS scores to mechanical stimulation. Ten healthy female and eight healthy male individuals participated in this study. The recordings of VAS pain scores to an identical mechanical pressure on the masseter muscle ...