Ge. Gerstner et al., VALIDITY OF A BRIEF QUESTIONNAIRE IN SCREENING ASYMPTOMATIC SUBJECTS FROM SUBJECTS WITH TENSION-TYPE HEADACHES OR TEMPOROMANDIBULAR DISORDERS, Community dentistry and oral epidemiology, 22(4), 1994, pp. 235-242
Citations number
23
Categorie Soggetti
Dentistry,Oral Surgery & Medicine","Public, Environmental & Occupation Heath
Clinical investigations of temporomandibular disorders require objecti
ve, repeatable methods for screening diseased subjects from non-diseas
ed control subjects. This study evaluated whether information gathered
from a short. public domain questionnaire was useful in distinguishin
g temporomandibular disorder subjects (n = 216) from non-temporomandib
ular disorder controls (n = 69) and tension-type headache subjects (n
= 22). The questionnaire consisted of eight questions relating to jaw
pain (i.e., location of pain, precipitating factors, and temporal patt
ern of pain) and five questions relating to jaw function (i.e., joint
noises, locking, and difficulty in opening). There were five possible
answers to each question which ranged from 0 (no symptoms) to 4 (unbea
rable or constant symptoms). The total scores for the eight pain quest
ions and the five jaw function questions were used to determine the qu
estionnaire's sensitivity and specificity in each group, and ROC curve
s were plotted to identify the best cutoff point for disease presence
or absence. Results showed that the questionnaire reliably distinguish
ed between the control group and temporomandibular disorder group with
90.3%-97.7% sensitivity and 95.7%-100% specificity at cutoff values b
etween 5 and 9. These results support the use of the questionnaire as
a primary screening tool for general practice and as a supplementary s
creening tool for clinical temporomandibular disorder studies. However
, results also showed that the questionnaire was unable to distinguish
easily between TMD subjects and temporalis region tension-type headac
he subjects.