Acupuncture mixed with manual therapy appears to enhance the treatment of temporomandibular disorders myalgia, increasing the area of the lateral pterygoid muscle and reducing its signal intensity ratio.
The study involved sixty-five patients with temporomandibular disorders myalgia (TMDM) who were randomly sorted into two groups: One group received manual therapy (MT) only, while the other group received acupuncture combined with manual therapy. All treatments were carried out once a day, five times a week, for two weeks. The primary measures included visual analogue scale, pressure pain threshold, painless maximum mouth opening, jaw functional limitation scale score, and certain characters of the lateral pterygoid muscle.
After the treatment, all groups showed palpable improvement, indicated by decreased pain and functional limitation scores, and increased pressure tolerance and mouth opening values. More remarkably, the group that got acupuncture combined with manual therapy showed greater improvement compared to the group receiving manual therapy alone. They also witnessed an increase in the area of the lateral pterygoid muscle and a decrease in the signal's intensity ratio.
