RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Persistent, painful temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) are challenging to manage and usually require the active engagement of patients. To achieve this, it is necessary to understand the complex and multifactorial nature of persistent pain. Many dental professionals have little education about persistent pain and may prefer to offer structural management and advice. This research aims to explore how people understand their persistent TMD and how this understanding has been influenced by their treatment providers. METHODS: Twenty-one people were recruited to represent a diversity of experience with persistent TMD. Interviews followed a semistructured topic guide. Themes were constructed through reflexive thematic analysis to represent how people made sense of their symptoms and the messages that they had picked up through their treatment journey. RESULTS: Participants described examples of conflicting opinions and inconsistent management recommendations. They rarely recalled collaborative discussions about the nature and complexity of their symptoms and different options for treatment. This experience is represented by a single theme, "a medical merry-go-round." Subthemes of "a medical journey to nowhere-participants' frustrated attempts to find medical management that will end their pain" and "is it me?-participants' questioning their role in persisting pain" kept participants on the merry-go-round, while symptom resolution and participants' emerging development of a holistic understanding of their TMD pain provided exit points. Understanding pain holistically tended to be helpful and typically occurred despite rather than because of the advice given in routine treatment settings. CONCLUSION: Participants in this study had not typically found their pain management within dental and medical settings to have helped them to construct meaning and understand their experiences of painful TMD. However, understanding symptoms holistically was experienced as beneficial. This study suggests that improved communication and signposting within services for persistent TMD may be beneficial to patients with TMD pain. KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER STATEMENT: Results of this study confirm that being offered a series of anatomically based, singular-cause explanations for persisting pain symptoms had been experienced as unhelpful by the participants who had sought help for their TMD. Participants highlighted the importance of accurate and collaborative communication and of dental professionals explicitly adopting and communicating a biopsychosocial understanding of pain to their patients who have TMD. Results highlight that some people can struggle to manage persisting pain with minimal support. Signposting patients to appropriate services and resources may help them to understand more about the nature of persistent pain and methods of managing it.
RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Persistent orofacial pain (POFP) can be caused by a range of conditions affecting the mouth and face and is often associated with significant disability. Biopsychosocial factors are known to be important predictors and have not yet been fully explored in this population. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to explore whether illness perceptions and psychological distress (anxiety and depression) could predict long-term outcome in a community-based sample of patients receiving routine care for POFP. METHODS: A longitudinal cohort design study assessed 198 patients recruited from primary or secondary health care settings on 5 separate occasions over a 2-y period. Outcome was measured by the Graded Chronic Pain Scale and dichotomized into good or poor outcome categories. Independent variables included subscale scores of the psychometrically shortened Illness Perception Questionnaire and the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4, assessing anxiety and depressive symptomatology). Logistic regressions were performed to test whether scores on each subscale would be associated with different outcomes for patients at 12 and 24 mo and overall. RESULTS: Beliefs about consequences predicted outcome category (good vs. poor) above and beyond other illness perception subscales, anxiety, and depressive symptomatology (z = 3.78; P < 0.000; odds ratio [OR], 3.05; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.71-5.43). Both depressive symptomatology, measured by the PHQ-2 (P = 0.001; OR, 4.06; 95% CI, 1.74-9.52), and psychological distress (mixed anxiety and depression; P = 0.029; OR, 2.88; 95% CI, 1.12-7.41), measured by the PHQ-4, were also predictive of poor outcome, but these effects were no longer significant once measures of illness perceptions were added. CONCLUSION: Beliefs about the consequences of POFP are important predictors of outcome independent of other variables and can easily and briefly be included in assessments to inform management decisions. KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER STATEMENT: The results of this study are relevant because they will allow clinicians to consider the use of brief and easy-to-administer self-report measures to identify POFP patients at higher risk of poor outcome so that management can be planned accordingly.
