Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Idiopathic facial pain is a chronic condition with unknown etiology and pathophysiology. Its diagnostic criteria depend on the exclusion of any somatic cause of orofacial pain. Several studies have investigated anxiety and depression, but there is a lack of publications about personality. The objective of this study was to describe three cases of patients with idiopathic facial pain that had their temperament and character evaluated in order to verify the relation between the findings with pain behavior and pain characteristics. The instruments used were a free interview and the Temperament and Character Inventory. CASE REPORTS: Case 1 was proactive and had high scores of cooperativity and self-transcendence correspondent to the well-coping behavior. On the other side, cases 2 and 3 showed similarities about their harm avoidance, novelty seeking and poor coping, correspondent to a self-protective insecure personality. CONCLUSION: These cases show the importance of personality assessment in order to determine coping strategies in complex chronic facial pain such as idiopathic facial pain.
Highlights
Psychiatric morbidities are frequent in patients with chronic pain, and the evaluation of anxiety and depression has been extensively discussed in the literature
Fibromyalgia syndrome is associated with high scores of harm avoidance with a tendency to pessimism, insecurity, uncontrollable fear, shame and timidity in the majority of social circumstances besides a chronic sensation of tiredness and fatigue[14]
The cases 2 and 3 are in accordance with the findings of fibromyalgia and other chronic pains[7,8,9,10,11]. They showed shame, timidity, harm avoidance and novelty seeking, aspects that are associated with the anxiety traits in chronic conditions
Summary
AND OBJECTIVES: Idiopathic facial pain is a chronic condition with unknown etiology and pathophysiology. The objective of this study was to describe three cases of patients with idiopathic facial pain that had their temperament and character evaluated in order to verify the relation between the findings with pain behavior and pain characteristics. CONCLUSION: These cases show the importance of personality assessment in order to determine coping strategies in complex chronic facial pain such as idiopathic facial pain. O objetivo deste estudo foi descrever três casos de pacientes com dor facial idiopática persistente que foram avaliados quanto a traços de personalidade e de caráter, bem como a associação desses traços com as características da dor e o comportamento doloroso. CONCLUSÃO: Esses casos mostram a importância de abordar a personalidade do paciente para que estratégias de enfrentamento adequadas sejam estabelecidas para a dor facial crônica complexa.
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