ISSN : 0376-4672
Temporomandibular disorder(TMD) is described as a cluster of disorders characterized by pain in the preauricular area and/or the muscles of mastication; limitations or deviations in mandibular range of motion; and noises in the TMJ during mandibular function. The most common symptom in TMD patients is pain that is aggravated by chewing or other jaw function. These symptoms are appeared when the stimuli loaded in TMJ are over the physiologic tolerance. The primary goal in treatment of TMD is to alleviate pain and /or mandibular dysfunction. TMD treatment can be divided into 2categories: reversible and irreversible methods. Reversible methods include medication, thermal therapy, habit modification, physical therapy, appliance therpy and arthrocentesis and lavage and irreversible methods include arthroscopic lysis, surgery, occlusal adjustment et al. It is widely accepted that reversible methods are ther first choice of treatments. However if reversible ones are not effective, irreversible methods are considered.
Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) prosthesis have been hesitated to use because of bitter memories about Proplast-Teflon interpositional TMJ implants. Many clinicians, however, are trying to use total TMJ prosthesis with getting continuous long-term follow-up results. Alloplastic total TMJ replacement have been applied to much more patients who have failed previous TMJ prostheses or TMJ implants, fibrous/bony ankylosis, severe osteoarthritis, degenerative joint disease, idiopathic condylar resorption, condyle loss by trauma or tumor resection, and other bony destructive diseases. Nowadays three types of total TMJ prosthesis are widely used. In this article, indications, types of prosthesis, safety and stability would be demonstrated with a case report.
TMJ reconstruction is one of the most challenging surgical treatment, and many methods using autogenous and alloplastic materials have been reported for making neocondyle. Although alloplastic materials which include aclylic, synthetic and total joint system are recently widely used, many surgeons agree that autogenous TMJ reconstruction is gold standard until now. In this article, classification of the TMJ defects and the various TMJ reconstruction methods using autogenous source were introduced with review of literature.
