Cranio
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Temporomandibular Disorder (TMD) is a term generally applied to a condition or conditions characterized by pain and/or dysfunction of the masticatory apparatus. Its characterization has been difficult because of the large number of symptoms and signs attributed to this disorder and to variation in the number and types manifested in any particular patient. For this study, data on 4,528 patients, presenting over a period of 25 years to a single examiner for TMD treatment, was made available for retrospective analysis and determination of whether the TMD care-seeking patient can be profiled, particularly pain difficulties. ⋯ Clearly prevalence of pain disclosed by the symptoms and signs examinations was high. Patients showed variable prevalence and nonprevalence of eight categories of painful symptoms and seven categories of painful signs. Despite the variability, these might be developed in the future into TMD scores or indices for studying and unraveling the TMD conundrum.