A study published in the Journal of Dental Education found that dentists with personal experience or knowledge of people with temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) showed significantly more positive attitudes, greater comfort, and better treatment knowledge when caring for TMD patients.
- Between 5% and 12% of U.S. adults are affected by temporomandibular disorders (TMD).
- Dentists with personal TMD experience showed higher treatment knowledge (r = 0.26), more positive attitudes (r = 0.16), and greater treatment comfort (r = 0.25).
- The more people with TMDs that clinicians knew, the more they cared for TMD patients (r = 0.34; p < 0.001).
- The study recommends improved TMD education in pre-doctoral and continuing dental programs, with a focus on raising awareness of TMD's patient impact.
Dentists who knew individuals with temporomandibular disorders (TMD) appeared to have more positive attitudes about treating patients with the same condition, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Dental Education.
These results highlight the need for dental educators to engage students and clinicians in hands-on TMD education, the authors wrote.
“The more personal experiences the dentists have, the more positive their TMD-related treatment attitudes were and the more comfortable they were with treating patients with TMD,” wrote the authors, led by Dr. Elizabeth Hatfield of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry in Ann Arbor, MI (J Dent Educ, October 24, 2026).
In the U.S., between 5% and 12% of adults are affected by TMDs. Considering this prevalence, it is plausible to think that clinicians have had personal TMD-related experiences or have loved ones or friends with these disorders, the study's authors posited. However, there is little research dedicated to dentists’ experiences with the signs and symptoms of TMD.
To date, no studies have investigated whether dentists’ TMD-related experiences were linked to heightened TMD-related interest and educational motivation or a higher likelihood of treating patients with this painful orofacial condition.
To investigate dentists’ TMD-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior and whether TMD-related experiences were associated with these constructs, a survey was sent, with 296 dentists responding to it. Pearson correlation coefficients (r) were used to explain the connections between clinicians’ TMD experiences, attitudes, and behavior, according to the study.
Additionally, the more people with TMDs that clinicians knew, the more treatment-related knowledge dentists had (r = 0.26; p < 0.001), the more positive their attitudes were (r = 0.16; p < 0.01), the greater comfort they had in treating the disorder (r = 0.25; p < 0.001), and the more they cared for patients with TMDs (r = 0.34; p < 0.001), the authors wrote.
Nonetheless, the study had several limitations. Since the data were collected in only one state, future studies should explore whether there are variations based on geography, they wrote.
“It can be concluded that educational initiatives in TMD need to be improved in pre-doctoral and continuing dental education, with a special focus on interventions that stress raising awareness of the impact of TMD on patients’ lives to improve attitudes and increase the willingness to engage in professional behavior,” Hatfield and colleagues wrote.
