Prevalence of signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorders and their association with young university students

Abstract

Objective: To verify the prevalence of signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorder and their association with joint noise, joint hypermobility, occlusal interference, orthodontic treatment and bruxism in a specific population composed of young university students. Methods: One hundred and seventeen (117) volunteers (mean age of 22 years) were selected from the undergraduate course in Dentistry at the School of Dentistry of the “Centro Universitário Hermínio Ometto” (Araras, São Paulo, Brazil). The volunteers answered a questionnaire and were submitted to clinical and electrovibratography exams. Afterwards, the volunteers were classified as either having temporomandibular disorder or not, considering the presence of painful sensitivity in the temporomandibular joint and/or presence of joint noise. The prevalenceof the studied factors was calculated together with the association between each factor, and the presence of temporomandibular disorderwas analyzed by the Chi-square test. Results: The prevalence of temporomandibular disorder in the evaluated sample was 42.9% and significant association was found between temporomandibular disorder and joint noise (p<0.05); and between temporomandibular disorder and bruxism (p<0.05). Conclusion: The results suggest that patients with presence of precisely diagnosed bruxism and joint noise should be monitored with regard to the appearance of signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorder.

Keywords

• articulação temporomandibular
• instabilidade articular
• bruxismo
• temporomandibular joint
• joint instability
• bruxism