Abstract

Orofacial pain, including temporomandibular disorders, is a chronic problem that could affect the quality of sufferer’s life and cause physical, psychological, and social consequences. Dentists are often confronted with this problem in their daily practice, however, they are not equipped with sufficient knowledge and guidelines to properly diagnose and manage their patients. This paper tries to provide the dental practitioner with the elementary information about pain in general and orofacial pain in particular to help them better understand orofacial pain in clinical set-up. Differential diagnosis of most common intra-oral and extra-oral orofacial pain conditions are tabulated in a simple way to allow the practitioner to generate a diagnostic decision in a straightforward manner and deal with these problems in a more efficient clinical approach.

Keywords: Differential Diagnosis; Orofacial Pain; Temporomandibular Disorders; TMD; Jaw Movement

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