Sammendrag
The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) facilitates a broad range of essential life support functions and social interactions. When the TMJ is affected by disease, functions like talking, chewing, yawning, and kissing can become difficult to perform and quality of life is affected.
Knowledge of TMJ disease is therefore important. The most common joint disease is osteoarthritis (OA). The hand, hip and knee are most commonly affected, but OA is also the disease that most commonly affects the TMJ. OA traditionally affects adults and elderly people, but also adolescents and children may be affected by an OA-like disease in the TMJ. There is a lack of knowledge of TMJ OA, especially about its nature and development at different ages, and how frequently it occurs in individuals with OA in other joints. This is the topic of Anna-Karin Abrahamsson's dissertation.
Abrahamsson and co-workers have studied TMJ OA with questionnaires, clinical examinations and computer tomographic (CT) methods in two study populations; elderly individuals with hand OA and young patients with erosive OA-like abnormalities. In the elderly, clinical and radiological TMJ findings are described and related. In the adolescents, the radiological findings are followed for several years.
The main results showed that CT-assessed OA was common in elderly individuals with hand OA, suggesting that TMJ OA may be part of a generalized OA disease. Despite high burden of TMJ-related symptoms, few of the elderly had sought healthcare. In the younger population, improvement in the erosive OA-like abnormalities was a frequent observation. Serious subjective TMJ symptoms over time were rare. In the literature, destructive TMJ abnormalities in symptomatic adolescents are frequently considered progressive in nature. This research indicates the opposite: a reparative potential. This is new knowledge that should be explored further in larger studies.