New recommendations for jaw pain

We talk about it much less, and yet chronic jaw pain is thought to be second only to back pain. One in ten people could one day find themselves having difficulty chewing or even speaking.

Géraldine Zamansky, journalist at the Health Magazine on France 5, talks to us today about the problems of our jaws and their evaluations. An unknown source of pain that is nevertheless very common.

franceinfo: This jaw problem comes just behind back pain on the pain podium?

Geraldine Zamansky : Quite. Behind a migraine that resists traditional treatments or painful ears without an otitis, there may be a jaw problem. A slight disruption of this joint, often linked to excessive tension, also risks slowing down the opening of the mouth or causing dislocation, for example.

It is in fact the second unknown cause of chronic suffering after back pain. This lack of knowledge even concerns the medical profession. So the diagnosis and the right treatments are often late. It is from this sad observation that a group of international experts has just published new recommendations. Swiss pain specialists, English dentists, and also Canadian patients who had “intimate” knowledge of these pathologies worked together for months.

Really, patients participated in the development of their future care?

So after years of wandering, these “expert patients” had fortunately already found solutions, as Professor Jason Busse, of the Canadian University of MacMaster, told me. But they explained to the scientists how even a small improvement could already change lives, and make certain side effects acceptable.

Especially if the strategy used does not result in anything definitive. And this is one of the first results of the analysis of the 150 clinical trials examined: the group is launching a red alert on the surgical treatments proposed, precisely irreversible.

Isn’t it the scalpel that can repair this misaligned jaw?

As long as it is precisely a disorder, and not a destruction of the joint, gentler solutions are at the top of the recommendations. Ideally with a physiotherapist for appropriate movements and massages. Behavioral and cognitive therapies are also highly ranked.

This involves treating the kinds of phobias generated by this chronic pain. When the fear of worsening the situation leads to reduced activity, even when eating, then it is immobilization that is dangerous. Concerning other avenues such as botulinum toxin injections to relax the muscles, the team is not opposed to it, since the effect is temporary, but it has not found convincing clinical trials, and invites urgently the specialists to carry it out!