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Facial Pain


 

Facial Pain

Pain management is particularly important for facial pain patients, considering a majority of face pain can be caused by various neuralgia (or nerve) disorders. Neuralgia treatment usually starts with medications, and some people don't need any additional treatment. However, over time, some people with the condition may stop responding to medications, or they may experience unpleasant side effects.

Johnston Pain Management offers a wide variety of treatment options designed to lessen or block pain signals sent to your brain. We offer options that can often relieve your pain including:

  • Anticonvulsants - Doctors usually prescribe carbamazepine (Tegretol, Carbatrol, others) for trigeminal neuralgia, and it's been shown to be effective in treating the condition. Other anticonvulsant drugs that may be used to treat trigeminal neuralgia include oxcarbazepine (Trileptal), lamotrigine (Lamictal) and phenytoin (Dilantin, Phenytek). Other drugs, including clonazepam (Klonopin) and gabapentin (Neurontin, Gralise, others), also may be used.

  • Antispasmodic agents - Muscle-relaxing agents such as baclofen (Gablofen, Lioresal) may be used alone or in combination with carbamazepine. Side effects may include confusion, nausea and drowsiness.

  • Steroid injections - Your doctor might inject corticosteroid medications near the nerve roots, into the small facet joints in the bones of the cervical spine or into the muscles in your neck to help with pain. Numbing medications, such as lidocaine, also can be injected to relieve your facial pain.

  • Botox injections - One type of injection therapy that has been particularly successful shows that onabotulinumtoxinA (Botox) injections may reduce pain from trigeminal neuralgia in people who are no longer helped by medications.

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