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Orofacial Pain: Classification and Road Map to Clinical Phenotypes

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Orofacial Pain Biomarkers

Abstract

The orofacial region consists of heterogeneous tissues that make diagnosing and treating pain conditions a challenging task. Vital to these processes are well-structured classification systems that cover the breadth of chronic orofacial pain conditions and provide diagnostic criteria to enhance our ability to properly identify and categorize clinical events in an agreed pattern. A revision of the classification systems for orofacial pain disorders developed respectively by the International Association for the Study of Pain, the International Headache Society, the American Academy of Orofacial Pain, and the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain reveals a number of deficiencies and inconsistencies ranging from terminology to the structure itself and the set of diagnostic criteria. To improve communication and enable effective collaborative work, we are at the crossroads for the development of a new multiaxial classification system using ontological principles to build a realistic and comprehensive representation of orofacial pain disorders. With research focusing on pain biomarkers, optimizing the systematization of data collection may contribute to identifying clinical phenotypes of chronic orofacial pain conditions that have the most impact on patient life.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Dental Medicine, Université Laval, 2420 Rue de la Terrasse, G1V 0A6, QC, Québec, Canada

    Jean-Paul Goulet DDS, MSD, FRCD

  2. Faculty of Odontology, Université d’Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Alain Woda DDS, PhD

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  1. Jean-Paul Goulet DDS, MSD, FRCD
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  2. Alain Woda DDS, PhD
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Correspondence to Jean-Paul Goulet DDS, MSD, FRCD .

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  1. Faculté de médecine dentaire, Université Laval, Québec, Canada

    Jean-Paul Goulet

  2. Faculty of Dentistry, McGill University, Department of Dentistry of Jewish General Hospital, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Ana Miriam Velly

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Goulet, JP., Woda, A. (2017). Orofacial Pain: Classification and Road Map to Clinical Phenotypes. In: Goulet, JP., Velly, A. (eds) Orofacial Pain Biomarkers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53994-1_1

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