Temporomandibular Disorders in Association with Stress Among Students of National Dental Care

Abstract

Background: A close relationship had been reported between depression, anxiety and many disease symptoms or disorders. This is true for temporomandibular disorders which is a collective term embracing a number of clinical problems that involve the masticatory musculatures, temporomandibular joint and associated structures, or both. This study designed to evaluate the association of stress with temporomandibular disorders among National Dental Care (NDC) students.

Materials and methods:The sample's size of 80 students of  first year (NDC) (37males and 43 females) and 80 (30 males and 50 females) of the second year. Firstly all the students subjected for stress questionnaire, secondly the stressful students subjected to different combination of clinical and questionnaire measures according to the research diagnostic criteria of temporomandibular disorders (axis I) which have standardized series of diagnostic tests based on clinical signs and symptoms. Data are analyzed by using Z-test and chi-square.

Results: The results obtained from this study showed that no significant differences between classes in the percentage of stressful students with temporomandibular disorders according to the clinical examination but in both classes, females' students showed higher percentage of temporomandibular disorders than males of same class. Bruxism was significantly higher among students of second year.

Conclusions: This study revealed that stress of studying at second year has no effect on temporomandibular disorders prevalence.