Dental Splint — TMJ

[Venusa]

As a bit of background, my T first developed in 2010. I learned to cope with it, UNTIL it got much worse in December 2016. My hearing test came back "perfect," and the ENT could find no cause of my T.

This left me pretty frustrated, so I thought of other causes. For at least 5 years now (hard to pinpoint the exact time), my right jaw has popped loudly whenever I open/close really wide. My left jaw will also do this sometimes, but mainly the right. (I had asked my ENT if that could be the T cause, but she wasn't sure.)

I then went to my dentist for possible help. He said that that I have a "deep bite," which is the cause of my popping. He then recommended that I wear a dental split 24/7 (well except for 10 min a day to clean it) for 6-9 months to fix my bite ("phase 1"), and then orthodontics thereafter ("phase 2"). He thinks this will relieve the T. Anyone have any luck with this?

The downside is (1) Phase 1 costs $4000 (insurance will not cover) and phase 2 is unknown since we don't know how the teeth will realign once my bite is fixed, (2) wearing a splint 24/7 kinda sucks, and (3) I'm kinda old for orthodontics (31).

Still, if it stops the T, it will be worth it. I'm just a bit nervous about committing to such a long and expensive treatment plan. In the meantime, I made an appointment with a second ENT to get another opinion on the matter.

 

[applewine]

I suggest not trying these treatments. I paid over 10k for one to see what would happen and backed out before it was permanent. That was just for the splints, not moving the teeth. I don't think these are the solutions and they give you a totally different bite that is more forward with a lot of tooth eruption. It would work for cosmetics. The only way this could fix things is if the structure is causing a much larger problem with the jaw and neck muscles, which of course is somewhat logical, but I've watched years of patient videos with after results and I'm not convinced of significant effects worth the treatment. Sometimes at first they say it worked, but if you pay close attention to their words it is an improvement at best, nothing more.

My tinnitus started when the face pain, jaw pain started and weird nausea and dizziness attacks that were extremely painful. Also electric shock like pain near the ears which was probably caused by SCM trigger points referring pain there.

I've been at this for years. There is a TMJ thread on here that @MrCartman, I and others participate in.

More recently I've noticed that on the side with my T which is the right side that there are two hard bumps in the upper/ side /back side of my neck which are not on the left side. They seem to be cervical bones with perhaps increased muscle thickness in one case. But, the majority just seems like hard bone.

This may be because the orientation is not the symmetrical, so maybe it is rotated or something. I've been at this for almost 10 years, had tons of tests and neck scans. But, I'm going to bring this up at my next visit with my primary care and ask them to physical observe with their hands what I'm feeling and tell me what that means. This is where a huge amount of the pain is also located, however I was focusing mostly on the SCM or jaw muscles in the past muscles and not noticing these two boney structures.