Personality characteristics and accompanying symptoms in temporomandibular joint dysfunction, headache, and facial pain.

Aims: Patients with different facial pain/headache pathologies usually complain of numerous accompanying symptoms relative to systemic dysfunctions or to the patient's personality characteristics. The purpose of this work was: (1) to determine the prevalence of accompanying symptoms in groups of patients with temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction and other types of facial pain or headache disorders, (2) to assess the patients' personality characteristics and anxiety levels, and (3) to see whether significant differences were found between the groups.

Methods: Two hundred forty-three patients were considered.

MMPI-2 profiles in chronic daily headache and their relationship to anxiety levels and accompanying symptoms.

Objectives: To examine a group of patients with chronic daily headache using the revised version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) and to determine whether the data acquired were related to the anxiety levels of the patients, as detected by the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) 1, 2 and to the presence of a number of accompanying symptoms that are frequently observed in patients with chronic headache.

Background: In the last decade, the MMPI-2 was released and its items used to develop 15 "content scales." Recently, this instrument was adapted to the Italian population.

Long-term results in patients with disk displacement without reduction treated conservatively.

Sixty-eight patients (seven men, 61 women) treated for disk displacement without reduction with extraoral mandibular manipulation followed by splint insertion, physical and drug treatment as needed, were re-examined at the end of treatment and after a subsequent period, ranging from 18 to 147 months. Two parameters were considered: 1. degree of spontaneous mandibular opening; and 2.

Personality characteristics before and after treatment of different head pain syndromes.

In order to examine whether, in patients with different types of headache and craniofacial pain, MMPI and STAI scores are significantly different before and after treatment, 114 patients with tension-type headache (n = 34), atypical facial pain (n = 20), temporomandibular joint dysfunction (n = 36), migraine (n = 16), cluster headache (n = 4), chronic paroxysmal hemicrania (n = 2), trigeminal neuralgia (n = 2) were examined. A pain index was calculated (0-10) which quantified pattern, duration and frequency of pain. The Italian MMPI (356 item abbreviated version) and the STAI tests were administered before and after treatment.