Metastatic cancer presenting as TMD. A case report

The dentist's responsibility in managing patients should include the awareness that not every pain in the face is due to a toothache or a temporomandibular disorder (TMD). This paper reviews the case of a 66-year-old patient who presented to the dental office with a chief complaint of unilateral jaw pain. The symptoms seemed consistent with TMD. Two years prior, the patient had undergone successful removal of a cancerous prostate and had remained under urologist care with a favorable prognosis. Subsequent imaging studies confirmed that the facial pain was due to multiple metastatic lesions to areas including the zygoma, infratemporal fossa, maxilla and brain. However, these metastatic lesions were not of prostate origin, but rather were from a squamous cell carcinoma originating in a primary site other than the prostate.