Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders may affect approximately 5–60% of the global population at some stage in their life and have a negative impact on these individuals’ quality of life (Bitiniene et al., 2018, Joseph et al., 2019). Although the majority can be managed with conservative or non-surgical treatments, TMJ interventions or surgery account for a significant number of patient episodes in oral and maxillofacial surgery.

The majority of studies on TMJ surgery use pain and mandibular movement as their primary outcome measures, as these are easy to assess and replicate. Quality of life, however, is much more complex, and understanding how the disease and its treatment affect speech, chewing, mood and so forth are arguably far more important in understanding the disease burden to the patients and their perception of treatment outcomes.

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) has been defined by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as “a measurement based on a report that comes directly from the patient (i.e. the study subject) about the status of a patient's health condition, without amendment or interpretation of the patient's response by a clinician or anyone else”. PROMS capture patients' own perception of the impact of their condition and its treatment on their life. This information can be collected before and after an intervention to assess the impact of the intervention on the patient.

The aim of this review was to assess how often PROMs were used for recording outcomes following surgical interventions on the TMJ, and to examine which PROMS were used.