Temporomandibular disorders: a multidisciplinary issue

INTRODUCTION Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are a group of functional disturbances of the mastigatory system, including muscle, joints and pain dysfunction. Due to a significant variability how signs and symptoms appear in this patients, early diagnoses often fails, allowing a negative evolution of the disease and making them more difficult to treat properly. Some of the most common complaints experienced by this patients are symptoms like headache, ear and face ache, that make them recur to other specialists , expecting relieve of their pain. The aim of this article is to alert for the importance of every health professional to understand the subject, to accordingly refer those cases. Relieve and satisfaction related by patient’s trough finally understands the source of their suffering is important and even considered in literature as a treatment modality. Temporomandibular disorders include a group of musculoskeletal pathologies, mostly chronic, that no health care person should neglect. Specialized dentists, involved in team approach, command the therapeutic approach, even this not being considered as a kind of dental condition. It is crucial to detect the source of acute and recent pain, in a stage that allows a reasonable treatment success, avoiding chronic stages where pain detaches from temporomandibular disorders and becomes the disease, often untreatable. In chronic patients, pain may result from tissue aggression, neuropathy (central or periferical), or psychopathological disturbances.