REVIEW ARTICLE
A Historical Note on the Treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia
Silvana Bara1, Gentian Vyshka2, *, Eris Ranxha3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2021Volume: 14
First Page: 9
Last Page: 13
Publisher ID: TOPAINJ-14-9
DOI: 10.2174/1876386302114010009
Article History:
Received Date: 5/4/2021Revision Received Date: 3/6/2021
Acceptance Date: 24/6/2021
Electronic publication date: 05/10/2021
Collection year: 2021
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Trigeminal neuralgia, otherwise known under the French denomination of tic douloureux, is a chronic painful condition of a particular severity. Its descriptions are numerous and date back to centuries before. Although the anatomy of the trigeminal nerve has been well known, the pathophysiology and hence the treatment of this disease has been largely fortuitous. Disparate pharmacological and surgical approaches have been tried, some of them heralding a much-required therapeutic success. The authors make a brief description of the first sources that have systematized the disease, along with all therapies documented in a written form, especially from indexed journals of the two last centuries. Very few remnants of the previous therapies, actually considered obsolete, have survived to the proof of time; one of them relies on the possible role of the autonomic nervous system and anticholinergic therapies, later replaced from modern conservative and interventional approaches. Anticonvulsants have been, since 1940, the mainstay of the therapy, however, progressions in neurosurgery and mini-invasive procedures have substantially improved the quality of life and the prognosis of an otherwise very painful and chronic condition.
