Evaluation of relationship between deep bite and temporomandibular disorders

Tınastepe N. Assessment of the relationship between deep bite and temporomandibular disorders in Turkish adults. Yeditepe University Health Sciences Institute, Department of Prosthodontics, PhD Thesis, Istanbul, 2012. Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) whose major clinical features are pain and dysfunction, are a collection of problems related to masticatory muscles and temporomandibular joint structures. In epidemiologial studies, it has been shown that occlusion, is one of the etiologic factor of TMD, contributes to multifactorial etiology of TMD as about 10%-20%. There are studies found positive and negative relation even reverse correlation between deep bite and TMD . The aim of the study is to assess relationship between deep bite with minimal overjet and TMD in Turkish adult population. For this purpose, 30 subjects who have deep bite with minimal overjet and 30 subjects who has no contact in their anteriors in control group were examined and their diagnosis were made according to Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (RDC/TMD) and compared. Psychological differences between the groups were assessed in the content of the study. All statistical analyses were performed with the NCSS 2007&PASS 2008 Statistical Software (Utah, USA) program. During the evaluation of the study data, along with the descriptive statistical methods (mean, standard deviation, frequency), parameters with normal distribution for the comparison of quantitative data were evaluated using Student?s t-test. The qualitative data were evaluated using Chi-square and Fisher?s Exact test. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. In the present study, TMD , opening-closing joint sounds, tenderness in lateral pterygoid muscle on palpation, presence of deviation ?deflection in the mouth opening were found significantly more in deep bite group than control grup.In conclusion, deep bite cases with minimum overjet were found as a risk factor for developing TMD.