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S e p t e m b e r 0 3 - 0 4 , 2 0 1 8 | B a n g k o k , T h a i l a n d
Dental Congress 2018 & World Dermatology 2018
Note:
Page 21
allied
academies
WORLD DERMATOLOGY AND COSMETOLOGY CONGRESS
DENTISTRY AND ORAL HEALTH
&
International Conference on
Joint Event on
Archives of General Internal Medicine
|
ISSN: 2591-7951
|
Volume 2
Ulla Kotiranta, Arch Gen Intern Med 2018, Volume 2 | DOI: 10.4066/2591-7951-C2-004
FACIAL PAIN – HOW TO RECOGNIZE, HOW
TO TREAT
T
emporomandibular disorders (TMD) are common orofacial pain conditions
and their diagnoses and management are clinically challenging. TMD
patients are treatedmainly in primary care. As an attempt to tackle the challenge
in serving facial pain patients, the first primary care based facial pain unit was
founded in 2003 as part of public dental primary care of Vantaa, Finland. We
found that graded chronic pain scale disability scoring can be used as a simple
screening instrument in primary health care to identify patients with different,
clinically relevant psychosocial profiles. Awareness of these differences may
be of help in the planning of individualized treatments. Given that most patients
seeking care for facial pain are functional TMD pain patients, the differences
in costs between therapies, e.g. conservative TMD treatment using occlusal
splint vs. self-care, are important in cost-economical perspective. Regarding
dysfunctional TMD patients, neuropathic and other pain patients, developing
multidisciplinary collaboration with health care professionals may increase the
effectiveness of health care system, decrease the risk for pain chronicity, and
save costs. Pain management unit in primary health care could be a useful
model to serve facial pain patients. Ongoing, studies of simple treatment
methods such as biostimulative laser have shown promising results in facial
pain management.
Biography
Ulla Kotiranta is a long line Dental Clinician in pri-
mary care, treating orofacial pain patients from
the last 15 years. She worked as a Clinical Lectur-
er in the University of Eastern Finland and in the
University Hospital Kuopio at the Department of
Maxillofacial Diseases from the last six years. She
is specialist in Prosthodontics and Stomatognathic
Physiology and special competence in pain man-
agement dealing with several study settings, scien-
tific interest in orofacial pain.
ulla.kotiranta@uef.fiUlla Kotiranta
University of Eastern Finland, Finland