Effects of competitive sports on temporomandibular dysfunction: a literature review

The German Society of Craniomandibular Function and Disorders recommends that patients suffering from temporomandibular dysfunctions should practice sports in order to compensate for everyday stress. This raises the question as to what extent competitive athletes develop temporomandibular dysfunctions or whether their athletic activities protect them. With the present literature review, the authors intend to give an overview of the currently available publications on this topic.

A literature research in the PubMed and Google Scholar databases was performed to filter out the currently available publications on the topic 'sports, and temporomandibular dysfunction.

Out of 114 available articles, seven met the inclusion criteria. Two other relevant articles were found in the list of references, so that in total, nine publications were picked for the review. In case numbers ranging from eight to 347 subjects, a temporomandibular dysfunction was detected with a prevalence between 11.7% and 100% for athletes and between 11.11% and 14.3% for non-athletes. Different kinds of sports were evaluated, all of them contact sports: basketball, handball, wrestling, boxing, karate, mixed martial arts, field hockey, water polo, and soccer. One study compared athletes with and without consumption of anabolic steroids, regardless of the type of sport. The level of athletic performance varied across the different studies.

Currently, studies dealing with the effect of competitive sports on temporomandibular dysfunction are scarce. Inconsistent methodological procedures permit only limited comparability.

A general trend, however, can already be discerned: professional athletes suffer from temporomandibular dysfunctions more frequently than non-athletes.