{"id":253158,"date":"2026-09-22T08:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T12:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=253158"},"modified":"2026-09-22T08:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T12:50:08","slug":"pain-awareness-month-what-is-orofacial-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/09\/pain-awareness-month-what-is-orofacial-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Pain Awareness Month: What is Orofacial Pain?"},"content":{"rendered":"

September is Pain Awareness Month. This campaign aims to increase understanding of pain, pain management, and the experiences of people living with pain according to the <\/span>International Association For the Study of Pain.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Seema Kurup, associate professor, division of oral medicine and orofacial pain at the UConn School of Dental Medicine, answers questions about orofacial pain in honor of the awareness month.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: When people hear \u201corofacial pain\u201d they usually think of TMD. Is that accurate?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair, and honestly, it\u2019s not a bad place to start \u2014 temoporomandibular disorder (TMD) is the condition most people have heard of. TMD is really just the entry point. Orofacial pain as a field covers a lot more territory than that, and some of it gets missed for years because nobody\u2019s looking for it outside a dental lens.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: You\u2019ve mentioned ENT providers are getting better at recognizing TMD. What\u2019s changed?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been encouraging. More <\/span>e<\/span>ar <\/span>n<\/span>ose and <\/span>t<\/span>hroat (ENT) colleagues now understand that TMD can show up as ear pain, tinnitus, fullness, headaches, even pain radiating into the neck and shoulder. So, a patient walks into an ENT\u2019s office convinced something is wrong with their ear, and increasingly, that provider knows to ask about jaw symptoms too. That kind of cross-specialty awareness is exactly what we need more of, just applied to a wider set of conditions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: What\u2019s an example of a condition that gets missed because of that dental<\/span><\/b>–<\/span><\/b> versus<\/span><\/b>–<\/span><\/b> medical divide?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Painful post-traumatic trigeminal neuropathy is a good one \u2014 or PTTN, for short. It can develop after something as routine as an extraction, an implant placement or even a root canal treatment. The procedure itself heals fine, but the nerve doesn\u2019t, and the patient is left with burning or tingling pain or altered sensations that can show up inside the mouth or out on the face. Too often the patient ends up back in the dental chair for more treatment when what they actually need is neuropathic pain management.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: What about conditions where there\u2019s nothing visible on exam at all?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s burning mouth syndrome, and it\u2019s a tough one for patients. They\u2019re describing this persistent burning, usually on the tongue, and the clinician looks in and sees nothing. No lesion, no infection, nothing to point to. It\u2019s easy for that to get brushed off or bounced between providers because there\u2019s no obvious culprit. But it\u2019s a real, recognized diagnosis with real management options \u2014 it just requires knowing to name it rather than dismiss it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: You also mentioned migraines and dystonia showing up in the face and jaw. Can you explain?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Orofacial migraine is exactly what it sounds like: migraine physiology, but the pain lands in the face, jaw, or even the teeth instead of the head. Patients sometimes go through multiple dental workups before anyone considers migraine as the actual source. Oromandibular dystonia is a bit different \u2014 that\u2019s involuntary jaw muscle contractions sometimes very painful, and it\u2019s often mistaken for a straightforward temporomandibular joint (TMJ) problem when it\u2019s really a movement disorder.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: If there\u2019s one message<\/span><\/b>,<\/span><\/b> you\u2019d want clinicians to take away this Pain Awareness Month, what would it be?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Widen the lens. TMD awareness has genuinely improved, and that\u2019s worth celebrating. But orofacial pain is a much bigger than TMD alone, and a lot of these patients are out there right now bouncing between providers without a diagnosis that fits. If a patient\u2019s pain doesn\u2019t add up with what you\u2019re seeing on exam, that\u2019s not a dead end \u2014 that\u2019s usually the moment to think beyond the obvious and consider a neuropathic, idiopathic, or neurovascular cause instead.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: Is there anything else you think gets overlooked when we talk about these conditions?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, and it\u2019s important \u2014 most orofacial pain patients are chronic pain patients by the time they get to me. They\u2019ve often been dealing with this for months or years, seeing provider after provider, and not getting real answers. That takes a toll. They are frustrated, their quality of life has taken a hit, and that frustration doesn\u2019t stay contained to just the pain itself. It spills over into anxiety, depression and sleep issues. So, when I am treating someone with orofacial pain, I am rarely just treating a jaw or a nerve. I am treating a person whose whole life has been affected by living with pain that, in a lot of cases, took too long to even get named.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Seema Kurup is an associate professor of oral medicine at the UConn School of Dental Medicine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":253196,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2166,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2177],"class_list":["post-253158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sdm","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-29 16:11:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253158"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253263,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253158\/revisions\/253263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/253196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253158"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=253158"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=253158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}