Interdisciplinary Functional Diagnostics and Functional Therapy
The interdisciplinary functional diagnostics and therapy help in determining the dental diagnosis and enable us the optimal preparation for your treatment and easy control of the success of the treatment. Various computer analyses and measuring techniques (i.e. optoelectronic measurements) are used to exactly determine your anatomical characteristics to specify your individual mouth and jaw situation. An overloading of your jaw joints and your spinal cord could be diagnosed at the beginning of your treatment, if present, or we would be able to prevent such problems from arising through your dental treatment.
Our clinic considers the interdisciplinary functional diagnostics and therapy to be important aspects of our treatment plan. Therefore, we have summarized for you a few general facts about this important area in dentistry. Our office team will gladly answer any further questions you may have in a personal discussion.
Many people today suffer from orthopaedic pains and neurology symptoms due to a “false bite” or an improper positioning of the scull with regards to the lower jaw. These pains include headaches, back pains and other problems with the spinal cord. In the facultative terminology we refer to this problem as “CMD” or craniomandibular dysfunction (former TMJ syndrome).
To understand this phenomenon you should view your body with its joints and joint capsules as a complicated dented wheel system of a clock. If one of the wheels breaks, the entire clock will thrown out of balance in a short time. Our body behaves the same way. For instance, if the upper and lower jaws do not fit optimally together – or the “bite isn’t right”, severe consequences may ensue for the teeth, chewing muscles, head and neck, back and of course for your jaw joints. A false distribution of forces within the oral cavity can lead to a progressing dysfunction of the jaw joint, which can cause pain at every movement of the jaw.
Once the balance has been disrupted, a dramatic chain reaction can be set off, which can lead to a shifting of the axis of the body. Once this process has been stimulated, it cannot be stopped at will, but rather a continual distortion of the body occurs. As this “chain of distortion” continues, problems in other regions of the body may arise through neuromuscular connections and symptoms could appear such as a ringing heard in one or both ears (tinnitus), or spinal cord problems or a tilting of the hip accompanied with differences in the lengths of the legs.
Due to the complexity and the variety of symptoms, interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary among functional diagnosticians, orthopaedists, physical therapists and sometimes psychotherapists, in order to help the patient regain his or her balance.