Trigeminal neuralgia is an extremely painful condition which causes jolts of very intense electric-like pains in the face. Fortunately, many trigeminal neuralgia sufferers respond to medications or Botox injections.
Several surgical procedures have also been used to treat this condition. One of these procedures is destruction of the trigeminal ganglion. The most effective treatment involves opening the skull and placing a teflon pad between the trigeminal nerve and the blood vessel which compresses the nerve (this procedure is called microvascular decompression). This pressure on the trigeminal nerve by an artery is the cause of pain in the majority of patients. While surgery can be truly curative, it carries a risk of serious complications and should be done only if medications and Botox injections fail. Ideally, it should be performed by a surgeon who has performed hundreds of these operations.
Besides medications, Botox, and injections to destroy the trigeminal ganglion, stereotactic radiosurgery, or gamma knife, offers another alternative to brain surgery. This treatment appears to be very effective and a new study published in Neurology suggests that this procedure is more effective if it is done early. If gamma knife radiosurgery is done within a year of the onset of pain, patients remained pain free for an average of 68 months, while if it was done more than 3 years after the onset, the relief lasted only 10 months.
Although microvascular decompression is curative, two groups of patients may opt for radiosurgery. One group consists of patients who are poor surgical candidates because they have other medical conditions which may increase the risk of complications or death. Another group include those who are afraid to have open brain surgery and who prefer to have stereotactic radiosurgery.
As a side note I should mention that gamma knife, or stereotactic radiosurgery is the treatment of choice for most cases of acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor of the vestibular nerve, a nerve going from the inner ear to the brain. Open surgery almost always leads to facial paralysis and complete loss of hearing, while gamma knife can shrink the tumor without any damage to healthy tissues.
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