Psycho-emotional factors and craniomandibular disorder severity

PSYCHO-EMOTIONAL FACTORS AND CRANIOMANDIBULAR DISORDER SEVERI-TY (Abstract): Craniomandibular disorders (CMD) are a series of clinical dysfunctions on the level of masticatory muscles, temporomandibular joint (TMJ) or both.The symptomato logy is represented by: muscle pain in the head and neck region, noise and pain in the temporomandibular joint, limitation of the mandibular mobility.This study aims to analyze the interrelation between psycho-emotional status and the severity of cranio-mandibular disorder (CMD) in patients from NE Romania.Materials and methods: We conducted a crosssectional study in a cohort of 106 consecutive volunteer patients who attended private praxis in Iasi during an eight-month period (October 2023-March 2024).Before the clinical evaluation, patients were required to answer a personalized merged version of the Temporoma ndibular Disorder-Pain Screener (TMD-Pain Screener) (ver.October 11, 2013) and Fonseca Anamnestic Index questionnaire used for screening of CMD.After this step t he patients filled in the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) (ver.May 12, 2013), which consists of 9 closed-ended questions and is designed for screening, diagnosing, monitoring, measuring the severity of depression.This questionnaire is completed by the patient and can also be administered repeatedly, to reflect improvement or worsening of depression in response to treatment.Results: The analysis of the scores recorded by patients on the PHQ-9 questionnaire, revealed that most of subjects (85.9%) have minimal (43 subjects) or mild levels of depression (48 subjects), in almost equal proportions (p=0.183).Only 11.3% of patients were registered with moderate depression, while 2.8% of patients (3 cases) were classified as having moderately-to-severe depression.We noticed that the severity of depression increases among subjects with a demanding profession (economist, commerce, IT).Conclusions: The severity of CMDs is more common in women and at the young age.Stress has been esta blished as one of the most significant risk factor for TMJ disorders apart from parafunctional habits (clenching and grinding) and pathologic occlusion.