People whose recurrent headaches have been diagnosed as tension related actually may be suffering from temporomandibular muscle and joint disorder, or TMJD, a study headed by a researcher from the UB School of Dental Medicine has shown.
Results showed that examiners could replicate tension-headache symptoms in 82 percent of subjects by performing the clinical examination of the temporalis muscle, which is involved in TMJD. Richard Ohrbach, associate professor in the UB Department of Oral Diagnostic Sciences, presented the study results at the American Association of Dental Research meeting held in March in Orlando, Florida.
The temporalis muscle is responsible for closing the jaw and is involved in chewing, but these core functions of that pair of muscles often are ignored when the presenting complaint is “headache,” as opposed to jaw pain, Ohrbach says.
“Knowledge about the intersection between jaw pain and headache is not well established, and, consequently, jaw pain may be ignored in the differential diagnosis,” Ohrbach says. “This can be most unfortunate for the individual, because TMJD can be very treatable, but if a jaw disorder is ignored, then treatment for the headache may not address all of the factors contributing to the headache.”