Correlation between Clinical Pain in Temporomandibular Disorders and Signal Intensity of the Retrodiscal Tissue Using Fluid Attenuation Inversion Recovery MRI – A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) is a broad term referring to pain and dysfunction of temporomandibular joint (TMJ), nmasticatory muscles and its associated structures. TMD is the most common orofacial pain condition with prominent feature like regional pain in the face and preauricular area during static and dynamic movements. Methods of assessing clinical pain were subjective and not affirmative. There still remains element of drafting the clinical pain evaluation in TMD patients. This study correlated the pain range in TMD patients with the levels of signal intensity (SI) in FLAIR MRI (Fluid Attenuation Inversion Recovery magnetic resonance imaging) to devise an objective pain assessing system based on the SI values. Settings and design: The present study is institution based, observational cross sectional study. A 32 temporomandibular joints were evaluated in the study. Before imaging, subjective pain score were recorded using Visual Analog Scale (VAS). In FLAIR MRI, both grey matter and retro discal tissue were included in the Region of Interest and the SIRs were calculated. SIRs in painful temporomandibular joints were correlated with Visual Analog Scale score. Unpaired t test was used to compare the mean values recorded for SIR. P-value <0.05 is considered to be statistically significant. Study results shows that SIRs of retrodiscal tissue were significantly increased in patient with higher VAS score (p<0.05). Retrodiscal tissue in painful proteinous elements. Keywords: Temporomandibular disorders, Signal intensity, FLAIR MRI, Retrodiscal tissue