Effects of treatment of temporomandibular disorders on headache, quality of life, and neck function in patients with tension-type headaches: a randomized controlled study

Objective: Tension-type headaches usually occur with temporomandibular disorder, which increases the risk of the chronic tension- type headaches. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of additional temporalmandibular therapy compared to cerivcal joint therapy for tension-type headaches with pericranial tenderness. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Methods: Forty-one patients with chronic tension-type headaches and pericranial tenderness were randomized into the 3 groups, such as the temporomandibular joint therapy group (TMJT group, n=14), cervical manual therapy group (CMT group, n=14) and conservative therapy group (CT group, n=13). All patients were assessed at baseline and after each intervention during the three sessions. The participants in the TMJT group received the temporomadibular joint treatment and cervical manual therapy for 30 minutes, once a week, for 3 weeks. The participants in the CMT group received the cervical manual therapy, and those in the CT group received modalities during same time period. The outcome measurements used were the intensity of headaches measured on the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), quality of life measured with the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6), and function of the cervical spine using the Neck Diability Index (NDI). Results: The TMJT group that received temporomandibular joint treatment and cervical manual therapy showed a significant decrease in VAS, HIT-6, and NDI compared with the other 2 groups (p<0.05). Conclusions: This study suggected that temporomandibular joint treatment combined with cervical manual therapy was more effective for the chronic tension-type headaches with pericranial tenderness than the usual cervical therapy alone.