Debta, F: Treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia

Trigeminal neuralgia (T.N..) is a sudden, severe, brief, recurrent stabbing pain in the distribution of the trigeminal nerve which every dental surgeon is likely to encounter in his/her clinical practice. T.N. is best symptomatically treated by medical treatment out of which carbamazepine (CBZ) thought to be a diagnostic drug marker of trigeminal neuralgia but CBZ has often undesirable side effects & sometimes ineffective, limiting its usage, thus search for more effective drug with lesser side effect is still on. Recently two newer anticonvulsant oxcarbazepine (OXC) & gabapentin (GBP) has been trailed in trigeminal neuralgia in different open clinical trial as monotherapy with encouraging results. These drug have convenient dosage and surprisingly fewer side effects. These facts that T.N. responds to newer anticonvulsant (OXC & GBP) in a better perspective, enable me to conduct the present clinical trial on 54 patients of T.N. who were made two randomized group for separate monotherapy for a period of six months. All the scoring data showed OXC is more therapeutic efficacious, cost-effective and well-tolerated profile than GBP & an emerging as a drug for treatment of T.N.