Atypical neuropathic facial pain is a syndrome of intractable and unremitting facial pain that is secondary to nociceptive signaling in the trigeminal system. These syndromes are often recalcitrant to pharmacotherapy…
Should patients undergo surgical intervention as soon as they receive a diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia (TN), or should they wait until pharmacologic treatment fails? This article describes some of the…
Persistent or chronic idiopathic facial pain, often called atypical facial pain, is often used as a diagnosis of exclusion. It is chronic pain in a nonanatomically distributed area of the…
Cancer-associated facial pain can be caused by a variety of pathologic conditions. Here the authors describe the symptoms and incidence of facial pain secondary to three separate anatomic subcategories of…
Pain is a subjective experience that cannot be directly measured. Therefore, patient-reported outcome is one of the currently accepted methods to capture pain intensity and its impact on activities of…
High-resolution MRI affords exquisite anatomic detail and allows radiologists to scrutinize the entire course of the trigeminal nerve (cranial nerve [CN] V). This article focuses first on the normal MRI…
The introduction of the endoscope into the neurosurgeon’s armamentarium has revolutionized ventral and anterior skull-base surgery and, more recently, has been used in the surgical treatment of cerebellopontine angle (CPA)…
Gamma knife surgery (GKS) represents a safe, effective, and relatively durable noninvasive treatment option for patients with trigeminal neuralgia (TN) and recurrent TN. By one year’s time, 75% to 90% of…
Three major percutaneous procedures are currently used to treat trigeminal neuralgia (TN). Percutaneous balloon compression, glycerol rhizotomy, and radiofrequency thermocoagulation interrupt afferent pain fibers by injury to the trigeminal nerve…
Key points • Although the earliest descriptions of trigeminal neuralgia as a clinical entity date back as early as the 1600s, the term tic douloureux was coined nearly a century…
