Facial Nerve Pain

Facial nerve pain, can also be attributed as trigeminal neuralgia. This is a chronic pain condition which affects the trigeminal nerve (the main sensory nerve of the face and motor nerve for the muscles of mastication), which serves as a carrier of sensation from the face to the brain. Affected people, even while brushing, may suffer from excruciatingly intense pain. During the start of this medical condition, people generally experience mild jolts of pain. However, with time, trigeminal neuralgia has all possible chances of getting worse and causing longer and frequent episodes of severe pain.

What Symptoms Does the Condition Cause?

The main symptoms is a severe or jabbing pain which may be felt like an electric shock. Episodes of mild pain occurring occasionally and pain due to chewing, speaking, brushing teeth and the like, may also arise as the symptoms of the condition. Cheek, jaw, teeth, gums and lips happen to be the areas where the pain spread to, while very few people experience pain in the eyes and the forehead. This pain may last from a few to several minutes and it may tend to affect one side of the face at a time, becoming intense and frequent with time.

What Causes the Condition?

As mentioned, the trigeminal nerve's function is affected or disrupted and this is indicated by the facial nerve pain. What happens is that at the base of the brain, a contact is established between an artery or a vein and the trigeminal nerve. This contact develops into a pressure which eventually hampers the function of this nerve and causes the pain. Aging, diseases like multiple sclerosis, etc., may be behind the pain. Triggers which may set off the pain include, getting exposed to a blow of wind, taking, drinking, eating, shaving, touching the face, brushing, smiling and any other activities which might change the facial expression.

Treatment Options

Medications help keep pain signals from reaching the brain. These medications include anticonvulsants and antispasmodic agents. If this method works out well, then a patient does not require the help of additional treatment procedures. However, this may not be the case with everyone, as the condition in some people simply stops responding to the use of medications. So, apart from the condition becoming worse, such people also start experiencing unpleasant side effects. In such cases, doctors consider options which involve injections or surgery. Injections include repeated shots of alcohol injections for temporary relief.

Talking about the surgery, it mainly aims at compressing the disrupted nerve, which is the trigeminal nerve or purposely damaging it, to keep it from malfunctioning. One side effect of such a surgery is some degree of facial numbness. To add to this, there are also chances of the facial nerve pain recurring months or years after the surgery. There are also treatment options which include nutritional therapy, vitamin therapy, biofeedback [a training program in which a person is given information about physiological processes (heart rate or blood pressure) that is not normally available with the goal of gaining conscious control of them], electrical stimulation of nerves and acupuncture, which some people have benefited from, as well.

The condition of facial nerve pain has all reasons to interfere with a person's daily functioning. Interacting with people suffering from the same disorder and getting the latest information about its treatment do help in a number of ways.