Viability of the quintessential five Temporomandibular disorder symptoms (5Ts) as a TMD screener

Abstract Objectives This study explored the viability of using the five Temporomandibular disorder (TMD) symptoms (5Ts) of the Diagnostic Criteria for TMDs (DC/TMD) as a TMD screener. Study Design A total of 1039 adults (≥ 18 years old) with a mean age of 32.65 ± 12.95 years (77.4% women) from a tertiary dental hospital were enlisted. The 5Ts questionnaire (involving items on TMD/facial pain, headaches, TMJ noises, closed, and open-locking) was administered, and TMD diagnoses were derived through clinical interviews/examinations, radiographic investigations, and the DC/TMD diagnostic algorithms/diagnostic tree. Diagnostic accuracy of the 5Ts was assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUCs) and various measures including sensitivity, specificity, predictive values (PVs), and likelihood ratios (LRs). Results Among the participants, 80.2% (n = 833) were 5Ts-positive and 19.8% (n = 206) were 5Ts-negative, while 51.3% and 85.7% received at least one pain-related (PT) and intra-articular (IT) DC/TMD diagnoses respectively. The 5Ts showed high accuracy for detecting all TMDs, PT, and IT with AUCs of 0.98, 1.00, and 0.98 respectively. Sensitivity ranged from 96.1 to 99.2% while specificity was 100.0%. Conclusions The 5Ts demonstrated high diagnostic accuracy for identifying pain-related and/or intra-articular disorders.