Abstract
Pain in TMD patients can be caused by morphoragic, psychologic, and neurogenic factors. Therefore, when TMD is evaluatea, a unitary viewpoint is inappropriate and plural one is necessary. In this study, pain in 80 patients with internal derangement of TMJ was evaluated by not only conventional method of VAS as a unitary one but also JMPQ (Japanese McGill Pain Questionnaire) as a plural one, and the results of the two methods were compared. The results were as follows.
1) Forty-one percent of patients chose one or more words in one category as the expression of their pain and 53% of them several words at least in two categories, though JMPQ comprises four categories.
2) Patients who chose words in the sensory category indicated a tendency to express their pain in higher value of VAS than those who didnot.
3) Patients who felt TMJ-pain on pressing showed higher value of VAS on chewing than those who didnot.
4) No words in four categories of JMPQ corresponded to high value of VAS regarding difficulty to sleep.
5) Patients who suffered TMJ-pain exhibited higher value of VAS regarding pain when doing nothing special, and those who suffered muscular pain on chewing lower value of VAS regarding a problem in daily life.
6) There are probably some sorts of pain that cannot be expressed by the VAS.
