A Journey to Understanding and Treating TMD/Craniofacial Pain: Rediscovering the Structure Often Overlooked in Orthodontics and Facial Orthopedics: The TMJ

This chapter shares a cautionary experience about temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pathologies, especially for fellow orthodontists. An alternative title for this chapter could be “Confessions from a Specialist in Orthodontics and Facial Orthopedics.” If it is valid to use the word “confession” when the disregard for the TMJ was not deliberate but out of ignorance. The motivation of this chapter is to present a clinical based review of TMJ pathologies in three sections: first, documentation, especially the images and photographs; the second section on the importance of body misalignments that can have their origins in structural failures of the temporomandibular joints; and the third, presentation of clinical cases with different TMJ arthropathies.