The authors present their first experience with temporomandibular joint examination with ultrasound. A group of thirty patients with the diagnosis of intracapsular lesion or inflammatory-degenerative disease was evaluated, focusing mainly on intraarticular pathologic changes. Each of the patients underwent first of all ultrasound examination followed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The results provided by MRI were considered to be precise and were used as a standard for further comparison. The results of the work show that ultrasonography compared to MRI reaches 90% accuracy in diagnostics of the degenerative disc changes and 71% in case of the disc dislocation. Therefore it can be said that ultrasonography becomes an alternative diagnostic method to MRI, which nevertheless currently cannot be fully replaced by that and remains a "golden standard".

        Key words: temporomandibular joint - ultrasonography