Trigeminal Neuralgia Treatment

Trigeminal neuralgia involving one side of the face: The cause is still unknown today.

The trigeminal nerve supplies sensation to the face. Usually, the source of the problem is the contact and pressure of the vessels on this nerve located at the base of the brain. As a result, dysfunction occurs in this nerve.

Trigeminal neuralgia can occur as a result of aging or be associated with multiple sclerosis or a similar disorder that damages the myelin sheath that protects certain nerves. Trigeminal neuralgia can also be caused by a tumor compressing the trigeminal nerve. After all, there must be a process that disturbs this nerve. In other cases, surgical injuries, stroke, or facial trauma may be responsible for trigeminal neuralgia.

There are some triggers for this disorder; For example: Shaving, touching your face, eating, brushing your teeth, talking, putting on make-up, face exposed to breeze, smiling, washing your face.

Symptoms of Trigeminal Neuralgia

Pain that is considered a type of neuropathic pain; It is characterized by sharp, lightning-like, stabbing, electric shock-like, burning and recurrent attacks of unbearable and unilateral pain. Pains are recurrent pains that can occur spontaneously. Attacks of pain are typically accompanied by tic-like cramps of the facial muscles, but are often triggered during our usual daily activities such as eating, washing the face, brushing teeth. You never know when the pain will come. However, when pain comes, no matter what you do, there is no medicine to relieve that pain. There are those who even think of suicide when these pains that devastate the patients come. They are very severe pain.

Trigeminal neuralgia is usually unilateral and most commonly affects the lower jaw. Most patients think that it is a toothache at first, and physicians mistakenly begin to pull their teeth in that area. However, an experienced dentist who knows the characteristics of pain can understand the event and guide the patient correctly. I should point out that, unfortunately, 80-90% of the patients who come to us are patients with almost all their teeth removed on the side of the pain. It is a fact that patients cannot distinguish the pain of this nerve from toothache. However, toothache is a constant pain. Neuralgia pain comes in the form of seizures, that is, there are painless periods in between. The patient does not even want to touch his face in order not to trigger the pain. It's an excruciating pain from life.

When trigeminal neuralgia is diagnosed, first of all, antiepileptic drugs that prevent this pain or reduce the severity when it comes are preferred. If seizures become more frequent and increase in severity despite these medications, minimally invasive treatments should be applied, and good results are obtained with these treatments.

Radiofrequency Ablation Treatment

This method, which is popularly known as nerve burning, is as follows: The nerve on the side of the pain is precisely detected by the patient's feeling of the stimulus given by the electrodes of the radiofrequency device in the pain area, accompanied by imaging devices, and this nerve is detected with an application of 1.5 minutes (60-80 degrees 90 seconds) is disabled. There is a serious reduction in the pain of the patients, and the patients may even come to the point of stopping their medication. Scalpel and narcosis are not used in the procedure. It is aimed that the patient does not feel the process by giving an advanced sedative medication at the minute of the complete lesion.

In this disease, which rarely requires surgical intervention, if the pain does not go away no matter what is done, the surgical method can be applied. In order to reach this nerve at the base of the back of the head, the patient's skull is opened and a barrier is placed between the nerve and the vessel, and the surgery is terminated. Most patients see significant benefit.