Tendernesses and mouth opening pains at the region of temporomandibular joints and/or in masticatory muscles are very common on temporomandibular joint disorder patients.
We usually give these patients anti-inframmatory analgesics or muscle relaxants until the treatment plan is decided, or when the splint therapy is ineffective for removing the tenderness or pain.
Recently we have had an opportunity to use a new anti-inframmatory analgesic of arylacetate derivatives, Amfenac Sodium (AMF) to the patients who have temporomandibular joint disorders, and have evaluated the analgesic efficacy, side effect and usefulness of this analgesic.
27 patients aged from 16 to 71 years (severity: mild 11, moderate 14 and severe 2) were given AFM (200 mg/day for 14 days) and evaluated symptoms were spontaneous pain, tenderness, mouth opening pain, interincisal opening range, clickin sound and crepitus at the 7th day and at the 14th day.
As a result, total improvements were as follows: excellent 4 (14.8%), moderate 13 (48.1%), little 9 (33.3%), no change 1 (3.7%).
6 side effects (22.2%) were reported, but those were mild (5 cases), or moderate (1 case). No severe side effect was found.
Consequently, we concluded the usefulness of AMF as followed: very useful 4 (14.8%), luseful 12 (44.4%), relatively useful 10 (37.0%). Total usefulness including very useful, useful and relatively useful was 96.2%.
