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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Plast Surg 2022; 55(01): 058-065
DOI: 10.1055/s-0042-1743131
Original Article

The Impact of Wearing a Face Mask during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Temporomandibular Joint: A Radiological and Questionnaire Assessment

Moath Zuhour
1   Department of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Meram Faculty of Medicine, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey
,
Majid Ismayilzade
1   Department of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Meram Faculty of Medicine, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey
,
Mehmet Dadacı
1   Department of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Meram Faculty of Medicine, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey
,
Bilsev Ince
1   Department of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Meram Faculty of Medicine, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey
› Institutsangaben
Funding None.
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Abstract

Aim Several health problems have been reported to be triggered or facilitated by prolonged mask usage during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. While wearing a face mask, people tend to push their jaws forward and downward in a repetitive manner to hold their masks in the right position; these jaw motions may induce temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD). In this study, we aimed to investigate these repetitive jaw movements while wearing face masks and their effects on TMD.

Patients and Methods Patients who applied with TMD signs between June 2020 and May 2021 were evaluated prospectively. A survey using a questionnaire was conducted to define patients with TMD that caused only by mask-related repetitive jaw movements. Demographic data (age and gender), mean duration of daily mask usage, mask type, and magnetic resonance imaging results were recorded.

Results Prolonged daily mask usage (≥8 hours/day) was significantly higher in patients with mask-related habits (group a) with a rate of 40.4% (p ≈ 0.001). Also, in this group, the disc displacement with reduction rate (54.6%) was higher compared with other groups (p ≈ 0.010). On the contrary, patients with no underlying risk factor (group c) showed an unexpected high osteoarthritis rate (p ≈ 0.029).

Conclusions In this study, we demonstrate that correcting the position of a face mask by repetitive jaw movements can increase the occurrence of TMD. Informing individuals wearing face masks about the risk of TMD and the importance of choosing the appropriate mask size according to the face shape are important issues to be addressed in the near future.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic - face mask - temporomandibular disorder - Surgical mask


Publikationsverlauf

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
25. Februar 2022

© 2022. Association of Plastic Surgeons of India. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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