Gender and Age Differences of Temporomandibular Joint Disc Perforation: A Cross-Sectional Study in a Population of Patients With Temporomandibular Disorders

The presence or absence of disc perforation (DP) has great value for the treatment planning of temporomandibular disorders (TMDs). Epidemiologic features of DP are limited in the literature. The present study investigated the epidemiologic features of DP by retrospectively reviewing 13,556 temporomandibular joint arthrographic examinations. Pearson Chi-squared test demonstrated that the rate of male patients who received the examinations more than once was significantly lower than that of female patients and the rate of DP in males was significantly lower than that in females. The age of all patients showed a bimodal distribution, with a 1st peak around 21 years of age, and a 2nd peak around 53 years of age. Linear regression analysis showed that the rate of DP was positively correlated with ages. The DP rate was increased by 0.3% for every 1 year of age. This retrospective cross-sectional study validated some findings about the gender and age differences of temporomandibular joint DP in the literature, and more importantly uncovered the exact relationship between the DP rate and the age in a large TMD patient population.