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TMD Diagnosis and Treatment

In Edmonton, Alberta

Special equipment is required to diagnose Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMD). Dr. Pavlenko has made this investment for his dental practice. He has post-graduate training in Neuromuscular Dentistry, which gives him both the theoretical knowledge and the hands-on expertise to assess your jaw joint and its related structures (nerves, muscles etc.).

If you’ve been suffering from chronic headaches and no cause has been found for them, TMD might be the culprit. Part of diagnosis is finding your relaxed jaw position and measuring and recording it. Strained jaw muscles are a central part of TMD and tooth grinding or clenching one of its common symptoms.

The K7 Evaluation System
This computerized system allows Dr. Pavlenko to accomplish three important goals in assessing your jaw joints:

  1. Record the sounds made by the jaw joints – an electrosonograph picks up sound from a lightweight headset that you wear while being tested. It records the vibration coming from the jaw joints when they move. This data is printed in a series of colored graphs.
  2. Measure the jaw muscle activity – The K7 electromyograph records electrical activity in the jaw muscles, from several electrodes placed around the jaw area. In real time, Dr. Pavlenko can watch this data being graphed from as many as eight sites simultaneously.
  3. Measure the jaw movements – The K7 Computerized Mandibular Scanning (CMS) picks up the motion of a small magnet on the lower jaw. For this testing you wear a lightweight frame supported by your shoulders. Eight sensors track jaw motion in three dimensions – up/down, sideways, and forward and back. The jaw joint is the only one in the body which can move in three dimensions like this.

All this data can be printed out in “patient mode”, clear and understandable. Dr. Pavlenko can also study it on the computer and see how it all inter-relates.

TENS Unit
The small, battery-powered TENS unit (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) will probably be your favorite part of TMD diagnosis. This is where your pain gets relieved. Using several electrodes placed on the head, neck, and shoulder areas, the TENS unit sends mild electrical stimulation to the jaw-related muscles. While you relax in a comfortable chair for 45 to 60 minutes, this repeated stimulation gradually relaxes the jaw muscles, perhaps for the first time in years. The pain caused by their chronic stress also fades away.

Now Dr. Pavlenko has enough information to plan your treatment. A permanently relaxed muscles is the end goal of treatment, so the treatment process will move your jaw from its current, pathological position to its precisely measured relaxed position.

TMD Treatments
Because each case of TMD is individual, treatments are individual too, and yours has not happened yet. Dr. Pavlenko will examine your teeth in light of your TMD status, and probably include some dental work in your treatment plan. That will be to reshape, replace, or move certain teeth which are preventing your bite from being smooth and normal. Misaligned teeth are often a contributing cause of TMD.

He may also design an orthotic for you to wear temporarily. It would retrain the jaw muscles, so they cease struggling against the jaw joint, and instead move it smoothly for your corrected bite. There may be also some physical therapy and  treatment appointments with other specialists like NUCCA doctor, all designed to give you permanently painless jaw movement.

If you have chronic headaches, please see our page on Is Your Migraine a TMD Headache?

You can read about the TMD symptoms on our Neuromuscular Dentistry page.

For more information, please call or email us to schedule a consultation with Dr. Pavlenko. Our friendly team will welcome you and show you around our comfortable offices. We serve the entire Edmonton, Alberta area.