Evaluating the prevalence of temporomandibular joint abnormalities in postmenopausal women

Resumen

Regarding the results from various and diversereports on the relationship betweensex hormones, especially estrogen, and theprevalence of TMD and its associated symptoms, it is quiteclear that there are very contradictory and misleading resultson the role of estrogen in the incidence of TMD andits associated symptoms in women before puberty, duringpuberty, before menopause, during and after menopause,which call for more quantitative and qualitative studies tobe conducted. Therefore, we decided to conduct a studywith the aim of evaluating the relationship between thepresence of menopause and its absence with the prevalenceof clinical symptoms of temporomandibular jointproblems in patients requiring prosthesis who visited theDental Prosthetics Department of School of Dentistry ofShiraz University. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive andanalytical study. In this study, 140 women aged 45-55years were examined. Of these, 71 were postmenopausalwomen and 69 were non-menopausal. These subject hadno history of trauma, jaw abnormalities and orthodontics.The Helkimo‘s clinical index was used to measure theseverity of TMJ dysfunction, and the data obtained wereanalyzed using Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests andthe statistical software of SPSS. The mean age for nonmenopausalwomen was 46.87 and for postmenopausalwomen was 51.43. Among the symptoms examined, therewas no significant relationship in the range of motionof mandible (P<0.187), however, the rest were significant.The most common symptom in postmenopausal womenwas dysfunction in TMJ function (33.3). This study showedthat TMJ problems are one of the complications associatedwith menopause; therefore, this complication should beconsidered along with other problems such as joint arthritisand osteoporosis that are more prevalent during menopausephase and middle age, and appropriate dentaltreatments should be perform with respect to this issue.