Prevalence of temporomandibular dysfunction in children and adolescents.

Objective: To review the prevalence of temporomandibular disorders (TMD) in children and adolescents, verifying the methodological variations.

Data Sources: Research conducted in Medline, PubMed, Lilacs and BBO databases, including manuscripts (except reviews and case reports) published from 1990 to 2012. The descriptors were "temporomandibular joint syndrome", "temporomandibular joint dysfunction syndrome", "temporomandibular joint disorders", "prevalence studies", and "cross-sectional studies"; the words "dysfunction", "disorder", "temporomandibular", "children", "adolescents", "prevalence", "frequency", and "transversal" were used.