| Abstract: |
SUMMARYTrigeminal neuralgia pain is one of the most terrible pains that affect human being (female more than male), it is mostly unilateral, and affecting one or more of trigeminal nerve branches, but the most commonly affected is the areas supplied by V2 followed by areas supplied by V3.Trigeminal neuralgia may be primary (idiopathic) or secondary to structural lesions along its course, like vascular compression, tumors, MS or inflammation.In this study we examined 42 patients with refractory trigeminal neuralgia by magnetic resonance imaging and also CT was done for 12 patients as a complementary study to study mainly the role of the former examination in evaluation of these patients in which clinical evaluation was ineffective for differentiation the two types of neuralgia ,in which 26 patients out of 42 patients were female and remaining were males , and according to their complains they divided into two groups , group I , represented by 7 cases of typical trigeminal neuralgia (pain only) and group II represented by 35 cases of atypical trigeminal neuralgia (pain and other neurological symptoms) .We used modified routine MR parameters and other additional new techniques as 3D-SPGR with 3D-TOF MRA to study the segmental anatomy of the nerve as well as delineating the different lesions affecting each segment of the nerve .To our knowledge ,the MRI gave positive imaging findings in 35 cases and gave negative images findings in 7 cases , in which the preganglionic segment of the nerve was the most commonly affected portion followed by nuclear portion and the most commonly encountered lesion in this study was neurovascular compression (NVC). In this study ,we found by using new MRI technique , the feasibility in detecting lesions , such as (NVC) and MS ,in which CT and other radiologic modalities can detect them as accurate as do MRI and subsequently their plane of treatment were changed , so from this point of view ,MRI should be mandatory for the patients with refractory trigeminal neuralgia.
|
|
|