Medical conditions and body pain in patients presenting orofacial pain.

OBJECTIVE To verify the frequency of self-reported medical conditions and pain areas in orofacial pain patients, comparing them with patients from the routine dental care. METHODS Data were collected from archives of the Orofacial Pain Clinic (Group A, n=319) and of the routine dental care clinics (Group B, n=84) at Faculdade de Odontologia de Araraquara, São Paulo, in Brazil. All individuals answered a standardized clinical questionnaire and completed a body map indicating their pain areas. RESULTS The Mann-Whitney's test demonstrated that Group A presented a higher mean number of medical reports than Group B (p=0.004). In both groups, Pearson's correlation test showed that the highest frequencies of medical conditions were positively correlated to highest frequencies of painful areas (0.478, p=0.001 and 0.246, p=0.000, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Group A tended to report more medical conditions and there was a positive correlation between the number of medical conditions and the one of pain areas for both groups.