Abstract:

Objective:The authors presented the shortterm and long term effects of the trigeminal neuralgia treated by RFTwith anterior- lateral facial, lateral facial and trans-subzygomatic approaches.Methods:320 primary patients with trigeminal neuralgia were se- lected for this study. All these patientswere followed up with the period of 1 to 6 years.Results:The first-time effective ratios of pain-relieve treated by using the anterior-lateral facial approach, and the lateral facial and the trans-subzygomatic, were 9313% and 7313% respectively.1Mostof the patients (9215%) achieved excellentorgood pain-relieve after treated by one of these three approaches. Compared with the lateral facial and trans-subzygomatic procedures, the anterior-lateral facial approach caused less recurrent rate in long term effects (P<0101). The late recurrence was found in 93 patients, but pain-relieve effect still could be obtained by retreatingwith the formermethod and without difficulty or hazard. One patient had serious Rollets syndrome.Conclu- sion:It is concluded that the anterior-lateral approach is a method with more effective pain-relieve and less pain recurrence rate, and the trans-subzygomatic method can be used as a substitutive approach in the treatmentof the second branch of trigminal neural- gia.

Key words: radiofrequency, thermocoagulation, trigeminal neuralgia, anterior-lateral facial approach, transsubzygomatic approach