Burning Mouth Syndrome Questionnaire

Abstract

Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is considered to be a chronic neuropathic condition in the mouth, presenting with burning symptoms affecting the tip and lateral borders of anterior 2/3rds of the tongue, followed by anterior hard palate and labial mucosa. There are other neuropathic conditions in the mouth hat can have similar pathophysiological mechanism and clinical presentation as BMS, these are atypical odontalgia (AO), neuralgias and trigeminal neuropathic pain. However, there are no diagnostic tools available to differentiate there different neuropathic conditions in the mouth. So, the main objective of this study was to develop a questionnaire, which can be used as a screening tool, to help identify and differentiate BMS from the other oral neuropathies. So, we included 2 grops of human subjects: Group1 - patients with a diagnosis of BMS(either primary or secondary); Group2 - patients with a diagnosis of other neuropathic pain conditions in the mouth. We developed a questionnaire with 12questions. It was given to all the participants after the written informed consent was obtained. The responses of the participants to the questions were assessed using descriptive and chi-square analyses, to look for the differences between groups. We found that the majority of patients in Gr1 complained of having both the pain and burning in their mouth at the time of their visit; no known identifiable etiology at the time of onset compared to a known dental treatment at the time of onset of symptoms in Gr2; eating and chewing made the symptoms better in Gr1 whereas they made the symptoms worse in Gr2; salt and acidic foods made the symptoms worse in Gr1 whereas they had no effect on the symptoms in Gr2; dental treatment made the symptoms worse in Gr2 whereas it had no effect on the symptoms in Gr1; Gr1 patients also complained of feeling of dry mouth whereas this was not observed in Gr2 patients. Though there were no significant changes in the sense of taste, but overall Gr1 reported a decrease in the taste whereas Gr2 reported a mix of decrease and increase in taste. We did not assess the changes in saliva, taste and smell changes objectively, only the subjective evaluations were performed.