Summary
The Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (RDC/TMD) offer a standardized system to clinically evaluate the most common subtypes of Temporomandibular Disorders (TMD). However, the validity of the clinical diagnose obtained with these criteria when compared with the diagnose obtained from the images of Magnetic Resonance (MR) is controversial. The objective of this study was to determine the concordance existing between the clinical evaluation obtained from the RDC/TMD and that obtained from MR images of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) of patients attending the Clínica Integral del Adulto – Clínica de ATM, of the Escuela de Odontología of the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. A population of 36 patients of both sexes, with ages between 18 and 60 years, were clinically evaluated with the RDC/TMD and MR. The variables considered were sex, age, signs and symptoms of the TMJ, Normal Disc Position (NDP), Disc Displacement with Reduction (DD-R) and Disc Displacement without Reduction (DD-NR). The data obtained were submitted to statistical tests to determine the Kappa Index and operative characteristics of the clinical evaluation. The Kappa Index obtained was 0.53, which shows that the concordance between the clinical and the imagenological evaluations is moderate. Of the total population studied, 91.6% were females, with 31 years as average age. The most frequent sign found was the joint sound (77%) and the most frequent symptom was facial pain (69%). The sensitivity of the RDC/TMD to determine NDP was 0.52 and the specificity 0.87; the sensitivity for the DD-R was 0.8780 and the specificity 0.709; the sensitivity for the DD-NR was 0.5714 and the specificity 0.948. The TMD were found most frequent in women, with average age of 31 years. The RDC/TMD can be considered reliable, especially for the DD-R; however, invasive, permanent or surgical treatments would require confirmation with imagenological diagnoses to avoid false positives.
KEY WORDS: temporomandibular joint, magnetic resonance images, temporomandibular disorder syndrome, temporomandibular joint disc, Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders.
How to cite this article
OSORIO, S.; PEÑA, E.; BAENA, G. & HERRERA, A. Concordance between the evaluations of the temporomandibular joint performed with the RDC/TMD and with images of magnetic resonance. Int. J. Odontostomat., 9(2):177-184, 2015.
