Neuralgias of Orofacial Region

Naik, Shobha
Shobha Naik is as an academician from India since 2013; she has been involved in Oral Medicine and Maxillofacial radiology consultancy and undergraduate teaching. She is associated with an NGO as a Tobacco intervention therapist and actively involved in the Cancer prevention programmes and She has 3 international and 2 national paper publications.

Neuralgia is a severe painful condition, most common being trigeminal neuralgia and patients often visit multiple clinicians complaining of the orofacial pain. A thorough understanding of the epidemiologic and etiologic aspects of dental, musculoskeletal, neurovascular, and neuropathic orofacial pain conditions is essential to the practice of evidence-based dentistry. So it is essential that oral physicians recognize the disease and diagnose it correctly for the patients to receive appropriate referral and therapy for this relatively treatable condition. Recent investigations have provided an explosion of knowledge regarding pain mechanisms and pathways and an enhanced understanding of complexities of many ramifications of the total pain experiences. Therefore, it is mandatory for the oral physicians to develop the necessary clinical and scientific expertise on which he / she may recommend diagnostic and management approaches. Optimum management can be achieved only by determining an accurate and complete diagnosis and identifying all of the factors associated with the underlying pathosis on a case specific basis.