{"id":2608,"date":"2024-04-04T20:31:06","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T20:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/?p=2608"},"modified":"2024-04-04T20:31:09","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T20:31:09","slug":"the-horrors-of-tmj-chronic-pain-metal-jaws-and-futile-treatments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/?p=2608","title":{"rendered":"The Horrors of TMJ: Chronic Pain, Metal Jaws, and Futile Treatments"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A TMJ patient in Maine had six surgeries to replace part or all of the joints of her jaw.<\/p>\n

Another woman in California, desperate for relief, used a screwdriver to lengthen her jawbone daily, turning screws that protruded from her neck.<\/p>\n

A third in New York had bone from her rib and fat from her belly grafted into her jaw joint, and twice a prosthetic eyeball was surgically inserted into the joint as a placeholder in the months it took to make metal hinges to implant into her jaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like Mr. Potato Head,\u201d said Jenny Feldman, 50, of New York City, whose medical records show she\u2019s had at least 24 TMJ-related surgeries since she was a teenager. \u201cThey\u2019re moving ribs into my face, and eyeballs, and I feel like a toy \u2026 put together [by] somebody just tinkering around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenny Feldman, of New York, has had at least 24 TMJ-related surgeries since she was a teenager but says she remains in constant pain and struggles to eat solid food. Photographed at her home on Jan. 19, 2024.(Anna Werner\/CBS News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These are some of the horrors of temporomandibular joint disorders, known as TMJ or TMD, which afflict up to 33 million Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health. Dentists have attempted to heal TMJ patients for close to a century, and yet the disorders remain misunderstood, under-researched, and ineffectively treated, according to an investigation by KFF Health News and CBS News.<\/p>\n

Dental care for TMJ can do patients more harm than good, and a few fall into a spiral of futile surgeries that may culminate in their jaw joints being replaced with metal hinges, according to medical and dental experts, patients, and their advocates speaking in interviews and video testimony submitted to the FDA.<\/p>\n

TMJ disorders cause pain and stiffness in the jaw and face that can range from discomfort to disabling, with severe symptoms far more common in women. Dentists have commonly treated the disorder with splints and orthodontics. And yet these treatments are based on \u201cstrongly held beliefs\u201d and \u201cinadequate research\u201d \u2014 not compelling scientific evidence nor consistent results \u2014 according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which reviewed decades of research on the topic. The NIH echoes this message, warning that there is \u201cnot a lot of evidence<\/a>\u201d that splints reduce pain and recommends \u201cstaying away\u201d from any treatment that permanently changes the teeth, bite, or jaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say that the treatments overall have not been effective, and I can understand why,\u201d said Rena D\u2019Souza, director of the NIH\u2019s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. \u201cWe don\u2019t understand the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n