Efficacy of Local Treatment in Patients With Rheumatic Diseases Affecting the Temporomandibular Joint-A Systematic Review.

Authors

Mattias Ulmner, Elizabeth Stenwall, Selihattin Mermer, Bodil Lund

Published in

Journal of oral rehabilitation. Oct 06, 2026. Epub Oct 06, 2026.

Abstract

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) involvement in rheumatic inflammatory arthropathies (RIA) has been sparsely described, and evidence regarding local treatment options for affected TMJs remains limited.
To perform a systematic review (SR) regarding local treatments for TMJ involvement in RIA and evaluate their effects on pain management, disease improvement, quality of life, health economics, and adverse events.
According to the PICO framework, patients with RIA were defined as the population, local TMJ treatment as the intervention, and alternative treatments, placebo, or no treatment as comparators. Outcome measures included maximum interincisal opening (MIO) and TMJ pain. A comprehensive search strategy was developed and applied to five databases.
The search generated 14 193 studies of which 33 met the inclusion criteria. All included studies had moderate or high risk of bias. Meta-analyses were conducted with due consideration of these limitations. Patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or RIA (excluding JIA) having total joint replacement were analysed and JIA patients demonstrated better outcome both regarding MIO (p = 0.006, I² = 86.8%) and TMJ pain (p = 0.02, I² = 82.2%). No significant findings were observed in the remaining meta-analyses. A critical appraisal suggests that intra-articular corticosteroid injections might be beneficial for JIA patients.
The listed results have a low level of evidence and should be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, this appears to be the only SR specifically evaluating local TMJ treatments in RIA. Ways of decreasing bias and increasing cohort sizes seem necessary for expanding knowledge.

PMID:
42838754
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.