General musculoskeletal complaints in a group of patients with craniomandibular disorders (CMD). A case control study.

In a cross sectional study 30 patients with craniomandibular disorders (CMD) and 30 controls were screened for general musculoskeletal complaints. A questionnaire was used to mark the sites of the body that were painful and assessments of pain intensities in the neck, shoulders and the jaws were registered. "Pain tolerance" was clinically measured with cutaneous electrical stimulation over the masseter areas. The CMD patients had a significantly higher number of painful sites on the body than the controls. They showed significantly increased "relative risks" of having musculoskeletal pain especially in the upper neck, the shoulder and lower neck region, the shoulder joint and the thoracic back. Discomfort and pain rating values for the neck and shoulders were significantly higher for CMD patients than for controls. The measurements of "pain tolerance" did not differ between groups. However, an individual variation was found among the CMD patients. Those who had pain in many different parts of the body were the least tolerant of experimentally induced pain.