Personality characteristics and accompanying symptoms in temporomandibularjoint dysfunction, headache, and facial pain

Aims: Patients with different facial pain/headache pathologies usually comp lain of numerous accompanying symptoms relative to systemic dysfunctions or to the patient's personality characteristics. The purpose of this work was : iii to determine the prevalence of accompanying symptoms in groups of pat ients with temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction and other types of fac ial pain or headache disorders, (2) to assess the patients' personality, ch aracteristics and anxiety levels, and (3) to see whether significant differ ences were found between the groups. Methods: Two hundred forty-three patie nts were considered. They had TMJ intracapsular disorder (TMJ, n = 71), ten sion-type headache (TH, n = 52), migraine (M, n = 68), chronic daily headac he (CDH, n = 26), or facial pain disorder as somatoform disorder (FP, n = 2 6). The presence of 23 symptoms was assessed; the Minnesota Multiphasic Per sonality Inventory (MMPI) and the Spielberger State and Trait Anxiety Inven tory (STAI) were administered and the relative scores were calculated. Four different MMPI clusters (depressive, conversive, emotional, coper) were al so considered. Intergroup differences were assessed by Chi-square analysis, 1-way analysis of variance, Bonferroni t test, and a logistic regression m odel and then standardized for gender and age, taking the tension-type head ache group as a common reference group. Results: The TMJ group had: (1) a l ower prevalence of almost all symptoms; (2) significantly lower scores of s everal MMPI and of state anxiety; and (3) odds ratio values < 1 for all sym ptoms except phobias and for emotional, conversive, and depressive MMPI pro files. The FP and CDH groups had the highest prevalence of the majority of symptoms and higher MMPI and STAI scale elevations. Conclusion: It is concl uded that some types of headache and facial pain seem to correlate with the presence of a number of accompanying symptoms and with some changes in per sonality. These changes are particularly relevant in patients with chronic daily headache and facial pain disorder. In contrast, patients with TMJ int racapsular disorders tended to show a low prevalence of accompanying sympto ms and a normal personality profile.