Comparative study between the effects of isolated manual therapy techniques and those associated with low level laser therapy on pain in patients with temporomandibular dysfunction

Objective: This study sought to evaluate the pain condition in patients with temporomandibular dysfunction after applying manual therapy techniques and those associated with this low level laser therapy. Methods: The study involved 20 patients with temporomandibular dysfunction, divided randomly into two groups: G1 (n = 10), formed by 7 women and 3 men, average age 28.2 years (± 7), treated with manual therapy techniques and G2 (n = 10), formed by 8 women and 2 men, with average age 24.01 (± 6.04), treated with the combination of manual therapy techniques and low level laser therapy. The patients were treated three times a week for four consecutive weeks. The memorandum of manual therapy techniques based on Chaintow,Makofsky and Bienfaint was used. For low level laser therapy GaAs laser (904 nm), 6 J/cm2, 0.38 mW/cm2 was used, applied at 4pre-auricular points. To analyze the pain level, the visual analog pain scale was used. For data analysis the Student’s-t and Wilcoxon tests were used, both with significance level of 5% (p <0.05).Results: There was significant reduction (p <0.05) in the level of pain in both groups treated, but in G2 the significance was higher.Conclusion: Manual therapy techniques, either alone or associated with low level laser therapy showed satisfactory results for pain control in patients with temporomandibular dysfunction