The trigeminal neuralgia is characterised by paroxysmal appearing fulgurous stabbing pain. Its medical condition is caused through a local-circumscribed demyelinisation of the trigeminal nerve with consecutive conduction of salting impulses on afferent pain fibres. It is essential to differentiate the symptomatic from the idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia. As primary management, a pharmacological...

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of percutaneous, controlled radiofrequency trigeminal rhizotomy (RF-TR). The outcome of 1600 patients with idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia after RF-TR was analyzed after a follow-up period of 1 to 25 years. METHODS: A total of 1600 patients with idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia underwent 2138 percutaneous radiofrequency rhi...

To evaluate the efficacy of computed tomography (CT) guided single radiofrequency thermocoagualtion (RFT) in 1137 patients with idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia after a follow-up period of 11 years, specially focused on duration of pain relief in different branches of trigeminal nerve, side effect, and complications. Retrospective study of patients with idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia treated wi...

PURPOSE Baclofen and morphine have shown efficacy against mechanical allodynia after infraorbital nerve chronic constriction injury (IoN-CCI). No drug effects have yet been reported on spontaneous trigeminal neuropathic pain. It has been proposed that the directed face grooming behavior that also develops following IoN-CCI offers a measure of spontaneous trigeminal neuropathic pain. SUBJECTS ...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to study patients with chronic neuropathic pain involving the maxillary region (V2) of the trigeminal nerve in patients with spontaneous pain and evoked pain to brush (allodynia). Patients underwent two functional scans (2-3 months apart) with mechanical and thermal stimuli applied to the affected region of V2 and to the mirror site in the unaffect...

BACKGROUND Glial cells have been shown to directly participate to the genesis and maintenance of chronic pain in both the sensory ganglia and the central nervous system (CNS). Indeed, glial cell activation has been reported in both the dorsal root ganglia and the spinal cord following injury or inflammation of the sciatic nerve, but no data are currently available in animal models of trigeminal...

BACKGROUND Patients presenting with facial pain often have ineffective pain relief with medical therapy. Cases refractory to medical management are frequently treated with surgical or minimally invasive procedures with variable success rates. We report on the use of ultrasound-guided trigeminal nerve block via the pterygopalatine fossa in patients following refractory medical and surgical treat...

Temporal summation of nociceptive inputs in trigeminal networks can induce central sensitization and maintain chronic pain. We combined functional magnetic resonance imaging and electrically evoked pain-related potentials (PREP) in healthy human subjects to identify brain regions involved in temporal summation of nociceptive inputs. We stimulated the skin innervated by the ophthalmic division o...

OBJECTIVE Radiosurgery has gained acceptance as a treatment option for trigeminal neuralgia. We report our preliminary multicenter experience treating trigeminal neuralgia with the CyberKnife (Accuray, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA). METHODS A total of 95 patients were treated for idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia between May 2002 and October 2005. Radiosurgical dose and volume parameters were retrospect...