Care of Patients with Temporomandibular Disorders: An Educational Challenge

The ability to recognize, evaluate, and manage patients with temporomandibular disorders is an important component of general dental practice. Therefore, information about these disorders should be a basic part of the dental curriculum. Although most dental schools do include this subject in their educational programs, its teaching typically involves the presentation of didactic material in formal lectures or in seminars. This teaching, however valuable, rarely includes the "hands-on" clinical experience of actually caring for this patient population. To address this lack of clinical experience, the Department of Oral Diagnostic Sciences of the School of Dental Medicine at the University at Buffalo has also developed a special elective program to offer dental students in their final undergraduate year the opportunity to obtain such experience. Keywords: temporomandibular disorders, orofacial pain, dental education, patient care, descriptive epidemiology