Dental Management
Seeking treatment for a TMJ disorder can be confusing, because dental authorities have been unable to agree on regulations, which has made dentists easy targets for all kinds of gadgets that purport to help treat TMJ disorders but have no clinical usefulness or demonstrated effectiveness. These gadgets include pulsed TENS to "relax" the jaw muscles, Doppler or joint vibration analysis to evaluate the condition of the TMJs, thermography to identify inflamed muscles, surface EMG to quantify muscle resting tensions, TEK scan to analyze bites, and all the technologies marketed as "neuromuscular dentistry".
A patient with a TMJ disorder in a large city could see a dozen different dentists who advertise treatment of TMJ disorders and receive ten different treatment plans. Some won't ever change the bite, some will move it forward, and some will move it backward. Some will recommend wearing an oral appliance full time without providing any exit plan to eventually free you from having to wear the appliance. Some will refer to an orthodontist who will simply straighten the teeth without having any way to know how it will affect jaw positions. Some will refer to an oral surgeon when the TMJs show advanced degenerative changes on X-ray but are already in full adaptation and therefore unlikely to ever cause symptoms. Prosthodontists usually treat the problem by crowning all the teeth, without having any way of knowing if such extensive treatment is needed to resolve the symptoms.
In the name of being comprehensive and for the purposes of feeling legally protected, many dentists perform extensive TMJ X-rays and other diagnostic tests that make their medical/dental exam look and feel very thorough to patients, but these tests are extremely unlikely to affect treatment. Most dentists just manage TMJ disorder symptoms in their patients using nightguards, drugs, physical therapy, and a large variety of supportive treatments to get them through the severe bouts that can occur during the natural course of a TMJ disorder. These treatments are described in MEDICAL MANAGEMENT.
The GOOD NEWS is that the symptoms will eventually disappear due to adaptation anyway. The TMJs heal, although tight jaw muscles can still produce symptoms as subsets of postural muscle tightness. Also, there are many different types of treatments which can enhance that adaptation. We employ orthopedics treatments which address the problem at its source and thereby prevent it from returning.