Brief Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders: Sensitivity and Specificity of Clinical Diagnoses (A Multi-Center Study)

Background: The brief Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (bDC/TMD) was recently published to simplify the full Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (DC/TMD) protocol. Objective: To measure the inter-examiner reliability, sensitivity and specificity of bDC/TMD Axis I diagnoses against DC/TMD Axis I diagnoses in primary and tertiary clinic TMD patient populations. Methods: A multi-center (Finland, Israel) retrospective study on 334 patients' records was conducted. A full DC/TMD clinical examination data was reduced to bDC/TMD items. Five Level 3 calibrated examiners independently determined a bDC/TMD diagnosis. Inter-examiner reliability, sensitivity and specificity were calculated for individual diagnoses, using DC/TMD diagnosis as the reference standard. Results: Inter-examiner reliability showed excellent to good reliability in all diagnoses except headache attributed to TMD, in which it was fair. Apart from headache attributed to TMD, the sensitivity of individual pain diagnoses was high. The sensitivity was lower in joint diagnoses. The specificity was high in all diagnoses. Conclusion: The bDC/TMD is a reliable instrument for general practitioner use.