Temporomandibular disorder symptoms in young adults: Three-dimensional impact on oral health-related quality of life.

BACKGROUND

The impact of temporomandibular disorders on functional, pain, and psychosocial aspect of patients' quality of life needed to be assessed.

OBJECTIVES

This study examined the three-dimensional impact of pain-related and/or intra-articular Temporomandibular disorder (TMD) symptoms and ascertained the inter-relationships between the functional, pain, and psychosocial aspects of oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL).

METHODS

Young adults were enlisted from a local university and TMD symptoms were assessed with the Diagnostic Criteria for TMDs Symptom Questionnaire (DC/TMD-SQ). Participants were stratified into those with no (NT), pain-related (PT), intra-articular (IT), and mixed (MT) TMD symptoms. OHRQoL was examined using the Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14), and dimensional effects (oral function [OF], orofacial pain [OP], and psychosocial impact [PI]) were established subsequently. Data were evaluated with Kruskal-Wallis, Dunn, and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests (α = .05).

RESULTS

The mean age of the participants (n = 1205) was 7 ± 1.3 years (71.8% women). While 42.2% reported no TMD symptoms, 22.3%, 16.9%, and 18.5% had PT, IT, and MT accordingly. The MT, PT, and IT groups presented higher total OHIP-14 and dimension scores than the NT group (p < .01). Scores were also significantly different between the MT and IT groups except for OF. For all TMD groups, the ranking of dimensional impact was OP > PI > OF, and associations between the OP and PI dimensions were the strongest (correlation coefficient [r ] = .57-.76).

CONCLUSIONS

Young adults with PT and/or IT symptoms have poorer OHRQoL, especially in the OP and PI dimensions, which were moderate to strongly correlated. The use of the three dental Patient-reported Outcome (dPRO) dimensions could provide construct equivalency among OHRQoL measures.