IDENTIFYING UNDIAGNOSED RHEUMATIC DISORDERS AMONG PATIENTS WITH TMD

If a patient with TMD has a coexisting rheumatic disorder, it may adve rsely affect the TMD symptoms and treatment outcome. A clinic that spe cializes in TMD treatment asked symptom-related questions of 104 patie nts with TMD, and a rheumatology clinic then performed rheumatologic e valuations. The authors review the results of the rheumatologic evalua tions and the predictive probability for the questions. The findings o f this study suggest questions that practitioners can ask to help iden tify patients with TMD who have a high probability of being diagnosed with a coexisting rheumatic disorder.