Temporomandibular Disorder among Women Who Experienced Posttraumatic Stress Disorder after a Miscarriage

This study intended to understand the risk of developing temporomandibular disorder among Saudi women who experienced a miscarriage.

Two hundred and eight Saudi women from several hospitals' gynecologic clinics in two areas in Saudi Arabia were screened to fill out the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (self-reporting questionnaire) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder and a structured temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD) Questionnaire (Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders). A single examiner did the clinical examination for temporomandibular joint (TMJ). One-hundred and fifty-eight of the participants were divided into two groups. Group A (85 participants) included females who had had a previous miscarriage, whereas Group B (73 participants) included females who had not had a miscarriage. IBM SPSS version 22.0 was used to conduct a nonparametric Chi-square test to find the significance of any observed differences.

Almost 40% of the participants had symptoms that qualified for possible TMD. Around 73% of the miscarried Saudi women in Group A showed symptoms of TMD. Furthermore, approximately 38% of the participants in Group B developed significant symptoms of TMD. The Chi-square test (Chi-test = 22.03 with P = 0.0001) shows highly significant association between treatment groups (control and study) and temporomandibular joint disorder group and non temporomandibular joint disorder group.

Women who suffer from spontaneous single or recurrent miscarriages are advised to seek a dental specialist for diagnosis and prevention devices such as a night guard.