Pain and the quality of life in patients referred to a craniofacial pain unit.
Although there are reasons to believe that temporomandibular disorders and other facial pain conditions would have a major impact on the quality of patients' lives, only a small number of studies have attempted to address this in a systematic way. In this study, data on pain and its consequences were assessed for 121 patients making their first visit to a craniofacial pain research unit. The extent to which musculoskeletal and neurologically based facial pain compromised the quality of life was measured using the Oral Health Impact Profile, a recently developed index of the functional and psychosocial outcomes of oral conditions. The data indicated that facial pain had a substantial impact on daily life and that its most common outcomes were psychologic. When compared with a nonpain population, the extent of this impact was striking. There was a four-fold increase in functional problems such as difficulty chewing foods and a nine-fold increase in reports of depression. As anticipated, scores on the Oral Health Impact Profile were associated with the characteristics of the pain and diagnostic subgroups.[1]References
- Pain and the quality of life in patients referred to a craniofacial pain unit. Murray, H., Locker, D., Mock, D., Tenenbaum, H.C. Journal of orofacial pain. (1996) [Pubmed]
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