Acupuncture as a treatment for orofacial pain from temporomandibular dysfunctions: a systematic review of clinical trials

• Autor(a) principal: Guaratto, Marcela Dornelas
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: Oliveira, Vinícius José de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Saúde (Santa Maria)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsm.br/revistasaude/article/view/64375
• topic: Analgesia por acupuntura; Dor facial; Fisioterapia; Transtornos da articulação temporomandibular.

The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) presents a complex functioning and thus it is susceptible to unfavorable conditions, such as temporomandibular dysfunctions (TMD), which generate intense pain. Acupuncture has been described as efficient in the analgesia of this condition. Therefore, the objective of this study was to conduct a literature review based on clinical trials on the treatment of orofacial pain from TMD with acupuncture techniques. The articles compiled in this study were selected from the Medline (PubMed), Scielo and Google Scholar platforms, using the descriptors “temporomandibular disorders”, “acupuncture”, and “acupuncture and temporomandibular disorders”, limited to the Portuguese and English languages, published between the years 2016 and 2020. Selection criteria: articles on TMD treatments associated or not with acupuncture techniques were included. Publications without full access, repeated by overlapping keywords, literature reviews, letters to the editor and not causally related to the topic were excluded. For the development of this review 4 articles with adequate methodological quality according to the Jadad Scale were included. In these articles, laser therapy techniques were applied to acupuncture points and traditional systemic acupuncture. Among the most used systemic acupuncture points are ST6 (Jiache), ST7 (Xianguan), LI4 (Hegu), GB20 (Fengchi) and GV20 (Baihui). Pain improvement was evidenced in the groups that received the interventions. Acupuncture is a technique recommended by national and international literature for the treatment of temporomandibular dysfunctions of muscle origin, promoting relief and/or total reduction of painful intensity in the disorder studied.