Complex Medical Conditions With an Underlying Occlusal Etiology Successfully Resolved by Disclusion Time Reduction (DTR)

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to present a series of chronic pain clinical cases that were originally diagnosed by non-dental healthcare professionals, as being something other than temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Specifically, the individual patient diagnoses were phantom bite syndrome (PB), Meniere's disease (MD), cervical dystonia (CD), and trigeminal neuralgia (TN), where the prior treatments rendered to each patient based upon these diagnoses, were all unsuccessful. Each patient was then re-evaluated with a series of biometric occlusal measurement technologies, which included the T-Scan 10/BioEMG III synchronization module. This two-function synchronized system re-diagnosed each patient, and then was employed during each patient's rendered occlusal treatment and their post-treatment maintenance, to evaluate the accuracy of the treatment results. The six presented chronic pain patients were then treated with disclusion time reduction (DTR) and the immediate complete anterior guidance development coronoplasty (ICAGD), after which each patient's symptoms either greatly improved or resolved completely. These differing Case Reports represent some of the earliest accounts of DTR Therapy and the ICAGD coronoplasty being employed in patients diagnosed with conditions that were thought to be non-dental head and neck disorders. As such, this chapter provides foundation literary documentation of the Dental Occlusion's extensive neurologic and etiologic reach, that afflicts patients with varying chronic pain conditions that have up to this point in time, been highly misunderstood. Importantly, the observations put forth herein are highly suggestive that TMD can present as one of these alternative medical diagnoses, or that TMD was each patient's original problem condition that had been misdiagnosed because of a diagnostic absence of objective occlusal force and timing data that can only be gathered by the T-Scan 10/BioEMG III synchronization module.