Discussion
TMD
TMJ
Both the counselling group and the counselling plus jaw exercises group showed effectiveness in the TMD treatment, improving the patients’ symptoms when comparing the follow-up evaluations to the baseline. This study reported a statistically significant difference for the resolution of the TMJ click at the end of the follow-up period when comparing the two treatment groups, in which the counselling plus jaw exercises group showed better results.Regarding the palpation, the counselling plus jaw exercises therapy showed higher efficacy throughout the evaluations when compared to the control group. This may be related to the fact that the exercises contribute to an improvement in the biomechanical activity of the articular disc and help reestablishing the muscular function [Palpation on the condyle lateral poles showed statistically significant results at all evaluations in both comparison groups. This may suggest that treatment including only the counselling program is effective to treat DDWR. Corroborating this fact, a systematic review [In the 30-day evaluation, the patients who received the counselling plus jaw exercises were unanimous when reporting that the treatment did not worsen the condition, unlike the patients who received only counselling. This may be linked to the fact that the exercises included in the present study protocol are efficient for the DDWR [The TMJ click is one of the most common complaints among TMD patients, what was also verified in this study [The sample was composed mainly of female patients, who are more likely to develop DDWR because they have a looser joint and, when aging, this tends to worsen since the disc position usually changes [To reduce the risk of bias and to present a high level of evidence and internal validity, this study followed the CONSORT checklist for a clinical trial, including randomization, allocation concealment, blinding, sample size calculation, and analysis by protocol [