Temporomandibular disorders in association with stress among students of sixth grade preparatory and students of fifth year high schools

Abstract EN

Background: A close relationship had been reported between depression, anxiety and many disease symptoms or disorders.

This is true for temporomandibular disorders which is a collective term embracing a number of clinical problems that involve the masticatory musculatures, temporomandibular joint and associated structures, or both.

This study designed to evaluate the association of stress with temporomandibular disorders among sixth grade preparatory students and students of fifth year of secondary school.

Subjects, materials and methods: The sample's size of 404 students of sixth grade preparatory study (154males and 250 females) and 360 (168males and 192females) of fifth year of secondary schools.

Firstly all the students subjected for stress questionnaire, secondly the stressful students subjected to different combination of clinical and questionnaire measures according to the research diagnostic criteria of temporomandibular disorders (axis I) which have standardized series of diagnostic tests based on clinical signs and symptoms.

Data are analyzed by using Z-test and chi-square.

Results: The results obtained from this study showed that no significant differences between classes in the percentage of stressful students with temporomandibular disorders according to the clinical examination but in both classes, females' students showed higher percentage of temporomandibular disorders than males of same class.

Bruxism and nail biting were significantly higher among students of sixth grade.

Conclusions: This study revealed that stress of studying at sixth grade has no effect on temporomandibular disorders prevalence.