Neurostimulation for the Treatment of Intractable Facial Pain

Invasive neurostimulation in facial pain and headache syndromes

In the mid of the 20th century various types of facial pains, not clearly originating from the teeth or the eyes, were often misdiagnosed as trigeminal neuralgia and treated with lesional techniques. Pains from the rest of the head were simply classified as ‘‘headache’’ and treated with the pharmaceutical means available at that time. For migraine there was often no effective therapy. Headache ...

Sphenopalatine ganglion electrical nerve stimulation implant for intractable facial pain.

Persistent idiopathic facial pain can be extremely difficult and significantly challenging to manage for the patient and the clinician. Pharmacological treatment of these painful conditions is not always successful. It has been suggested that the autonomic reflex plays an important role in the pathophysiology of headaches and facial neuralgia. The key structure in the expression of cranial auto...

Neurostimulation for Pain

The role of neurostimulation in the treatment of neuropathic pain.

The treatment of chronic pain syndromes may include pharmacological, physiotherapeutic, and invasive methods. Considerable number of patients do not achieve sufficient pain relief with pharmacotherapy, in these patients with neuropathic pain, electrical neurostimulation may be applied. The available neurostimulation techniques which may be offered to the patients are: transcutaneous electrical ...

Neurostimulation methods in the treatment of chronic pain.

The main neuromodulatory methods using neurostimulation principles are described. It concerns peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS), spinal cord stimulation (SCS), deep brain stimulation (DBS), motor cortex stimulation (MSC), and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). For each method the history, pathophysiology, the principles for use and the associated diagnoses are mentioned. Spec...