Abstract
While citing references, we discuss the surgical methods and results of arthroscopic surgery of the temporomandibular joint at our department. Our subjects were 51 patients with 71 affected joints. These included 9 men with 10 affected joints, and 42 women with 61 affected joints. The average age of the male patients was 31.6 years (range ; 17-47 years), while that of the female patients was 34.3 years (range ; 17-74 years). Preoperatively the average mouth opening was 28.3 ± 6.6mm, and that improved significantly to 39.8±5.0mm postoperative (p<0.01). The VAS for temporomandibular pain and impaired daily living activity was 4.9±2.6 and 5.1±2.7 preoperative respectively, One month postoperative it was 1.5±1.5 (p<0.01) and 1.0±1.6 (p<0.05), respectively and three months postoperative was approximately one tenth of what it had been preoperatively. Of the 51 patients, there were 36 "significantly improved" cases (70.6%), 10 "improved" cases (19.6%), and 5 "mildly improved" cases (9.8%), and as a result, the efficacy rate was 90.2%.
