State of the temporomandibular joint of professional flute players according to clinical examination and vibrography

BACKGROUND: When playing the flute, flautists take an asymmetrical posture, involve their masseter muscles extraordinarily, and experience stress. All these factors can affect the temporomandibular joint.

AIM: To identify pathognomonic signs of temporomandibular dysfunction in professional musicians playing the flute by analyzing clinical examination data in combination with joint vibration.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Thirty professional flautists and 30 asymptomatic control subjects were examined. A standard clinical examination, a questionnaire survey based on the OHIP-14 questionnaire with additional questions, and a simple Hamburg test were conducted. We also conducted joint vibration analysis in both flautists and control subjects using the BioJVA device from the BioPAK complex (BioResearch, USA).

RESULTS: The survey showed that flautists experience clicks and pain in the temporomandibular joint and pain in the muscles of the head and neck significantly more often than the control group. According to the results of the Hamburg test, symptoms of temporomandibular joint dysfunction were detected much more often among the musicians than among the control subjects. These were clicks in the joint and pain during palpation of the masticatory and temporal muscles. Joint vibration analysis showed that the total integral in flautists’ tracks exceeded 20 PaHz, which was three times more often than that in the control group and indicates a pathology in the temporomandibular joint.

CONCLUSIONS: Clinical examination and joint vibration analysis revealed that the symptoms of temporomandibular dysfunction are more common in flute players than in the control participants; however, no pathognomonic signs of dysfunction were found.