Dr. Adams' Alabama Headache Blog

Nonspecific physical symptoms were analyzed to determine differences in response to the SCL-90 Somatization subscale between tinnitus TMD patients (T's) and non-tinnitus TMD patients (NT's). Forty-eight T's were found among 300 TMD patient records (4 were rejected due to incomplete records leaving 23 female and 21 male Ts) and 48 NTs were selected at random from the same population abd balanced for gender. Raw scores of the nonsepecific physical symptoms, pain items included showed that the Ts scores significantly higher than NTs. When pain items were excluded were not significantly different from NTs. Raw scores were then ordinalized as Normal, Moderate, or Severe according to Axis II scoring critieria of the Research Diagnostic Criteria for TMD. With pain items included, Chi Square tests comparing the three categories showed the distribution of the Ts to be significantly different from that of NTs, excepting the Normal vs. Moderate categories. When pain items were excluded, the distibutions over the three categories were not different. Thus, Tinnitus TMD patients tended to report higher pain item scores, placing more of them in the Severe of the Axis II, Research Diagnostic Criteria.