Effect of photobiomodulation treatment on pain control in patients with temporomandibular dysfunction disorder: systematic review

ABSTRACT

Objective

To critically evaluate the literature and answer the question, “How effective is photobiomodulation treatment on pain control in patients with TMJ disorder?”.

Methods

PRISMA, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Embase databases were used for the personalized search strategy. For risk of bias, Rob 2.0 for randomized clinical trials and ROBINS-I for non-randomized clinical trials were used.

Results

Eighty-four articles were found and, after removing duplicates, seventy one studies were included for titles and abstracts. For a full reading, 30 articles were selected and, according to the eligibility criteria, 24 remained for qualitative analysis. The studies showed a low risk of bias. Due to the heterogeneity of the studies, it was not possible to perform a meta-analysis.

Conclusion

Photobiomodulation is an effective adjunct for the treatment of temporomandibular disorders, being a less invasive approach, safe, low-cost, and without side effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Temporomandibular disorder
• photobiomodulation
• low-level laser therapy
• systematic review

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08869634.2022.2086599.

Additional information

Funding

This work did not receive any kind of financial support.