Psychometric Profiles and Related Pain Characteristics of Temporomandibular Disorder Patients

The psychological characteristics of patients with temporomandibular disorders have received much attention in the literature. A multivariate clustering technique has been used in the study of psychological characteristics of other chronic pain conditions, and this has recently been applied to "temporomandibular joint pain" patients to develop homogeneous psychometric subgroups. The primary objective of this study was to determine if these subgroups could be replicated in a separate sample. A group of 109 consecutive patients, presenting with complaints of jaw pain, were administered a Symptom Checklist-90 Revised and a questionnaire regarding characteristics of the pain complaint. A multivariate clustering technique was used to identify three discrete psychometric subgroups, as in previous studies. Although similar, these subgroups were not identical to those of previous studies. The small number of subjects in the psychometrically abnormal subgroup was of special interest.