A recent Consensus Study Report 1 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Temporomandibular disorders: Priorities for research and care. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC2020 of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommends that the field of temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) must be totally changed in terms of biomedical research, professional education/training, and patient care. Recent research demonstrates that TMDs are complex multi-system disorders, which points to the need for a different, patient-centered, interprofessional approach to TMD research and treatment. Therefore, traditional dental-centric approaches to research and treatment of TMDs must be modernized to align with insights gained from new scientific discoveries. The NASEM Study Report was produced by a Committee on “Temporomandibular Disorders: Priorities for Research and Care (2020)” to address improved care and new research directions for TMD. This announcement summarizes the NASEM Committee's recommendations and reports on ongoing efforts to implement these recommendations. These efforts are led by The TMJ Association (TMJA), a nonprofit patient advocacy organization, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the TMJ Patient-Led RoundTable under the auspices of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its Medical Device Epidemiology Network (MDEpiNet).