INTRODUCTION: Different hypotheses of reasons for common incidence of temporomandibular disorders (TMD) and otalgia have been discussed. The hypothesis of this study was, that the high prevalence of otalgia in patients with TMD may result in part from pain in the M. masseter pars prof. or in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) which, due to the close anatomic neighborhood, can feel like ear pain. MATERIAL AND METHODS: [corrected] We retrospectively analyzed the anamneses of 720 of our TMD-patients with regard to main treatment motivation: how many patients quoted "pain in the ear" as main treatment motivation and how many of them had no objective findings in the ear but muscle tenderness of the M. masseter prof. or objective findings in the TMJ. Using all pairwise multiple comparison procedures (Dunn's Method) we compared the frequency of muscle and joint findings in patients with ear complaints to two controls: Tinnituspatients and patients seeking orthodontic treatment. RESULTS: 51 of 720 patients quoted ear pain as main treatment motivation. 25 of them (49 %) had findings in the masseter muscle, 9 (18 %) in the joint and 15 (29 %) had findings in both the joint and the muscle. The frequency of findings in the controls was significantly (p <0.001) lower. CONCLUSION: A significant fraction of patients seeking treatment due to pain in the ear have no findings in the ear, but in the TMJ and in the masseter muscle.
