My first experience with a TMJ patient was in 1983. Since then I have tried to fix my patient's TMJ problems. In 1999 I started trying a different approach to TMJ. In 2004 a survey was sent to 300 sequential patients I had treated for TMJ. I was curious as to why most of my TMJ patients were not coming back for follow up. I had treated over 500 TMJ patients and very few were coming back for follow up--I wanted to know why. Over 100 surveys were returned with 87% of my patients still doing much better with their TMJ symptoms. I was unprepared to have the survey say my patients had achieved TMJfreedom.