[Clinical aspects of craniomandibular disorders. I. Analysis of a sample group of patients and diagnostic classification].

Data collected on 406 patients of both sexes, aged between 9 and 78 (mean age 30.47) and suffering from algias and craniomandibular disorders, have been examined, in order to show the more frequent clinical variables and to improve the knowledge of the stomatognatic dysfunction, by characterizing diagnostic subgroups. The observed prevalence of the female sex and young adults is in agreement with the literature. Older subjects seem to accept more easily dysfunctional problems; the developmental age needs an active prevention. The data were similar to those of the previous researches, demonstrating that the trend of this disease is constant, during the last 15 years. The most frequent sign and symptoms were: joint noise, muscles tenderness, mandibular hypomobility, cephalalgia, earache. The classified, variously imbricated, pathologies were the muscular disorders (40.1%), the internal derangement (disk dislocations), (35.8%) and the inflammatory and degenerative (morpho-structural) changes (19.6%). The multifactorial aetiology was confirmed by investigating the main pathogenetic factors, which resulted: bruxism (35.9%), loss of vertical dimension (34.7%), postural problems (33%), mandibular entrapment (26.6%), facial asimmetry (26.1%).