Acupuncture anesthesia is not often used in dental practices because its efficacy depends on various conditions. However, pain-relieving methods, which use no medication, are necessary for those rare patients who are hypersensitive to local anesthetics or for whom local anesthetics are difficult to use because of diseases of the internal organs of the nervous system. In a patient hypersensitive to local anesthetics, we recently attempted to relieve the pain during extraction of an impacted lower third molar by applying acupuncture anesthesia, after relaxing the patient both physically and mentally with acupoint stimulation. By these methods, pain control for this patient was successful during and after surgery, without medication.

[Objective]Acupuncture has been reported to be useful for temporomandibular disorders. There have been many reports on muscle problems in temporomandibular disorders (TMD) but only a few reports on disc problems. We report on the use of acupuncture in a temporomandibular disorder patient with disc disorders.
[Case]A 19-year-old female complained of pain upon opening her mouth and trismus. We applied acupuncture with the aim of resolving the disc problems and providing analgesia by a contributing muscle needling approach.
[Methods]The following were measured:intensity of jaw pain, anxiety and satisfaction (visual analogue scale:VAS), position and form of disc and caput mandibulae (MRI) and presence of jaw deviation.
[Results]The following were improved after acupuncture treatments:intensity of jaw pain, anxiety and satisfaction, limitation of jaw movement and jaw deviation. However, the positions of the discs did not change.
[Conclusion]These results suggest that acupuncture may be effective for temporomandibular disorder patients with disc disorders.

Temporomandibular arthrosis, whose major symptoms are trismus, pain of the temporomandibular joint and articular noise, has recently been increasing, primarily in younger people. This condition is often accompanied by unexplained complaints (e. g., headache and stiffness of the neck and/or shoulder) which are indications for the application of acupuncture therapy. To deepen the recognition of temporomandibular arthrosis by clinicians, we recently prepared a video tape showing detailed procedures of acupuncture therapy for this disease. The first half of this video tape consists of an explanation of the anatomical features of the temporomandibular joint, the pathophysiology and classification of temporomandibular arthrosis, and magnetic resonance images of the temporomandibular joint. The latter half consists of the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for this disease, including the acupoints often stimulated for its treatment and the techniques of acupuncture therapy.