Referred Pain Manifestation and Its Impact on Patients With Temporomandibular Disorder.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate whether a higher number of sites eliciting referred pain upon palpation is associated with greater impairment in biopsychosocial aspects in TMD patients and identify variables that predict increased referred pain.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study analyzed data from 77 women with myalgia, assessing the number of sites eliciting referred pain upon palpation in relation to clinical (duration, frequency, intensity, painful body sites, pain-related disability), psychological (stress, anxiety, depression, catastrophizing, sleep quality), and psychophysical variables (mechanical and pressure pain thresholds, temporal summation and conditioned pain modulation).

RESULTS

Spearman's correlation revealed a significant correlation between the number of sites eliciting referred pain upon palpation in the orofacial region and both pain intensity and frequency (p < 0.001), as well as with the number of painful body sites (p = 0.009). Negative binomial regression indicated that each additional day of pain in the past week and each additional painful body site were predictors of increases of 10% and 4%, respectively, in the number of sites eliciting referred pain upon palpation.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings highlight the utility of assessing referred pain sites as a complementary indicator of severity in clinical pain parameters, providing a practical and effective tool for a more comprehensive evaluation of patients.