Introduction:

A temporomandibular disorder is a group of musculoskeletal conditions that affect the temporomandibular joint, the mastication muscles and the adjacent anatomical structures.

Objective:

To evaluate the effectiveness of the physical therapies in patients with temporomandibular joint disorders.

Methods:

A therapeutic intervention was carried out in Mártires del Moncada Teaching Provincial Stomatological Clinic from Santiago de Cuba, from June, 2016 to February, 2020. The sample was formed by 264 patients distributed in 4 groups with 66 members each one, to whom different physical therapies were applied, such as ultrasound, laser therapy, magnetotherapy and technique of transcutaneous electric stimulation, respectively. The following variables were analyzed: age, grade of dysfunction of the temporomandibular joint and therapeutic effectiveness. The percentage as summary measure and the chi-squared test were used with a significance level of 0.05.

Results:

There was a prevalence of the female sex in all the therapies applied with more than 75.0 % and the 40 - 49 age group. When concluding the treatment it was observed that in the groups where ultrasound, laser and magneto was used, the response was effective in more than 90.0 % of the patients, with primacy of the first one (96.6 %); however, in the group where the technique of transcutaneous electric stimulation was used it was just achieved in 89.4 % of the affected patients.

Conclusions:

The ultrasonotherapy was more effective in patients with temporomandibular joint disorders.

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