Efficacy of manual therapy by different healthcare professionals on pain and function in temporomandibular disorders: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials.
Rita Chiaramonte, Martina Ferrillo, Alessandro de Sire and 1 others
PMID 41762127WHAT IT FOUND
Manual therapy reduces pain and improves mouth opening in TMD patients in the short term, regardless of the practitioner's profession.
However, evidence quality is low to moderate, with few long-term data, so sustained benefits are unproven.
Key findings
01Manual therapy was effective in reducing pain immediately after treatment, independent of the professional category.
02The certainty of evidence for pain reduction was judged as low to moderate, and for maximum mouth opening as low.
03Differences across professional categories likely reflect study design and intervention variability rather than causal superiority.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
High heterogeneity in the types of manual therapy, treatment dosages, and comparators prevented a quantitative meta-analysis. Most included studies had short follow-up periods, so long-term effectiveness is not well-established. Several trials had small sample sizes and potential risks of bias, particularly regarding blinding and incomplete outcome data. The analysis by professional category is descriptive and likely influenced by publication patterns rather than true differences in clinical effectiveness.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that manual therapy provides long-term cures for TMD. The evidence supports only short-term improvements in pain and function, and the quality of this evidence is low to moderate. Furthermore, do not interpret the effectiveness across different professions as a ranking of one discipline over another, as these comparisons are confounded by study design and publication bias.