Happy January! It's 2024, we think it's time to demystify the TMJ and better serve your patients. So, we decided to load this email up with a TON of great resources, articles and courses that can help you master this complex joint.

In this month's Newsletter:

Range of Motion Scale

Why use a Range of Motion Scale? Seriously, why do we need it and what's it for? The Range of Motion Scale specifically focuses on assessing the health of the Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ). Range of Motion Testing is accomplished by using a simple, but very effective tool, the Therabite Range of Motion Scale by Great Lakes. It is used to measure vertical opening and lateral movement of the mandible.

How do you measure vertical opening? For measuring vertical opening, the scale is self-explanatory. The notch is placed on the lower incisor midline (or substitute) and you ask the patient to open wide. It is important to measure the amount of overbite and add/subtract to amount of opening. The normal amount of vertical opening is 40-55 mm. Also observe how the mandible tracks during opening and closing. Is there deviation or deflection? Is there pain? Are there noises?

Next up, measuring lateral movements. When measuring lateral movements, you place the arrow on the scale on the upper midline pointing towards the lower incisors. Notice the relationship to the lower midline, have the patient open slightly and move laterally. The normal lateral measurement is 8-12 mm. Again, any pain or noise? The range of motion test has important information that needs to be correlated with the other components of the TMJ-Occlusal exam. The starting point for any treatment plan is assessing the health of the joint. If the Range of Motion is limited, what does it indicate? Is it a muscle issue or a joint issue or both? Many things to consider!

Read full article here.

Which one is which?

So when you're trying to decide if your patients have an internal derangement or an occlusal muscle problem, how do we go about doing that?!

Step 1: Listen to your patient. Find out where their pain, tension, and tenderness is and ask them to point. Just listen to what they have to say, so then as we get into the clinical exam, we're going to be looking at things like range of motion. Does the patient have range of motion that goes straight open and closed or are they deviating to a side? Typically, if they're deviating to the side, it's the affected side.

Step 2: Load test. The biggest, most clinically relevant way of finding out if someone has an internal derangement while they're in your office is by doing our centric relation load test. Bimanual manipulation in three distinct levels of loading will allow us to determine if a patient has an issue. So on your lightest level of loading with bimanual manipulation seating the joint, if a patient experiences any sorts of tightness, tenderness, tension, pain, discomfort in their jaw joint, you're pretty much going to be sure that there's something else going on inside the capsule versus someone who can accept firm load without any signs of tension or tenderness. So a lot of our patients who come in saying that they have a TMJ problem, actually will have an occlusal muscle problem. And once you do your load test, you're going to find that.

View full article here.

Dawson Updates

Dr. Pio Modi, Dawson Faculty, is speaking at the Rocky Mountain Dental Convention. His course is SOLD OUT!
New Core Curriculum names have been announced for 2024 courses.
Carrie Botsford officially announced as new Dawson Academy President
ACT Dental spoke with Dr. Hess on how to 'Recession Proof Your Practice'

Related Courses

TMD Patients:

Diagnosis & Treatment

Nov. 7-9, 2024
CE: 20
St. Petersburg, FL
View More

Request Info

TMD and Cervical neck connection

Sept. 20, 2024
CE: 4
Virtual Course
View More

Sign Up

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Hands-On Electives

Core Curriculum

Live Stream Courses

FREE WEBINAR! 🥳

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 10, 2024

Join a

FREE Webinar!

"The Matrix of Functional Anatomy:

6 Decisions for Determining Contour and Position of the Central Incisors"

🗓️ Jan. 10, 2024

⏰ 7pm - 8pm ET

Register For Webinar

*Space is limited to the first 1,000 registrants*

Educating Patients: The TMJ joint

(4 different phases of the joint)

Educating patients on dental conditions can be very challenging for many dentists. A complete dentist has even more challenges, especially when it comes to explaining joint conditions with their patients. The complete dentist starts the examination by examining the joint first. Based on what we know, there are four categories or phases of joints that we need to discuss: the green joint, there are two in the yellow-joint category, and the red joint. Talking to your patients about each of these categories is very important, because if they understand the condition, they can understand the recommended treatment is necessary. We start with the green joint.