The effect of diet texture on healing following temporomandibular joint discectomy in rabbits.

This study evaluates the healing of the rabbit temporomandibular joint (TMJ) following discectomy in animals fed coarse or ground diets. Twenty New Zealand rabbits were divided into four groups with two unoperated groups serving as controls. A unilateral discectomy was performed and the animals were placed on either a regular (coarse) or a ground diet immediately following surgery. After 3 months, histologic evaluation demonstrated that fibrocartilage thickness was greatest in the discectomy-coarse diet operated joint, less in the discectomy-ground diet operated joint, still less in the discectomy-coarse diet unoperated joint, and unaffected in the control animals. The results of this study demonstrate that diet texture can affect TMJ healing following discectomy. The adverse responses of the coarse diet affected not only the operated joint but also the unoperated contralateral joint.