Trigeminal neuralgia is a common clinical condition, mostly seen in middle-aged and elderly people, especially in patients with atherosclerotic hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Once the disease occurs, the pain is severe and seriously affects daily life. Most patients often seek medical treatment blindly, and it is difficult to get timely and correct treatment, which not only delays the disease, but also leads to loss of confidence in disease treatment due to repeated ineffective treatment. So, how should trigeminal neuralgia be treated? What are the common misunderstandings in the diagnosis and treatment of trigeminal neuralgia? Myth 1: Not recognizing trigeminal neuralgia and delaying the diagnosis and treatment. Trigeminal neuralgia with typical characteristics is easy to identify and diagnose – trigeminal neuralgia is characterized by recurrent paroxysmal severe pain in the facial areas such as lips, corners of the mouth, nose, palate or oral mucosa, without aura, coming and going rapidly, resembling lightning, with intense pain, like cutting, burning, needling or electric shock. Often there are some particularly sensitive areas (“trigger points or trigger points”) that can trigger severe pain in the face with slight contact, and patients are often afraid to speak, eat, brush their teeth and wash their faces for fear of pain attacks, which seriously affects their quality of life, and some patients even tell that they feel worse than death when the pain attacks. For early mild trigeminal neuralgia or atypical trigeminal neuralgia, it is often mistaken for toothache, migraine, sinusitis or other stomatological and quintuplegia diseases, and even wrongly treated with tooth extraction. A patient once had several teeth on the painful side extracted and still had pain, but was later diagnosed by a neurologist as suffering from trigeminal neuralgia, and the pain was cured after treatment by microvascular decompression. Myth 2: Trigeminal neuralgia is an incurable disease. Most patients know they suffer from trigeminal neuralgia, but they do not know that trigeminal neuralgia can be cured or eradicated. The reasons for this are many: 1) lack of effective medical information, 2) lack of proper guidance from doctors, 3) loss of confidence in the cure because of ineffective long-term treatment, these patients often suffer from trigeminal neuralgia for many years, and have been transferred to many hospitals for treatment, and have tried carbamazepine, Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, radiofrequency, buried wire, local closure, tooth extraction and many other treatments. The pain was never effectively controlled, and the life was painful, and the confidence in the cure was lost. This situation is more common in clinical work. In fact, trigeminal neuralgia is a completely curable disease, the key is to get the guidance of professional doctors and choose the right treatment method. Trigeminal neuralgia includes two types of primary trigeminal neuralgia and secondary trigeminal neuralgia. 1. The common causes of secondary trigeminal neuralgia include tumors (cholesteatoma, trigeminal nerve sheath tumor, auditory neuroma, meningioma, etc.), inflammation, cerebrovascular disease, skull base malformation, etc. Therefore, treatment for the cause is the key to treating secondary trigeminal neuralgia; 2. The etiology and pathogenesis of primary trigeminal neuralgia, although Therefore, the main treatment method is to remove the compression of the nerve roots by surgery (also known as “microvascular decompression”). Since the beginning of trigeminal nerve root microvascular decompression surgery in the 1970s, tens of thousands of patients with trigeminal neuralgia have been effectively treated, and now microvascular decompression surgery has become the first choice for the treatment of primary trigeminal neuralgia at home and abroad, with a cure rate of over 95%. Therefore, trigeminal neuralgia is a completely curable disease. Myth 3: Excessive worry about the risk of surgery and afraid to receive surgical treatment. Many patients are desperate to cure the disease because of severe pain, but they are always worried and afraid at the mention of surgery, always thinking that surgery will open up the skull – “to open up inside the brain”, and eventually they often dare not undergo surgical treatment, especially for patients with relatively mild symptoms This is especially true for patients with relatively mild symptoms. In fact, this is a misconception. Microvascular decompression surgery for trigeminal neuralgia is a very mature surgical technique that has been used in clinical practice for more than 60 years, and the surgery is not performed inside the brain, but in the subarachnoid space between the brain tissue and the skull, so the risk of surgery is not high. Especially in recent years, the application of minimally invasive surgical techniques has not only significantly improved the surgical efficacy, but also greatly reduced the surgical risk, and microvascular decompression surgery is now the international preferred option for the radical treatment of trigeminal neuralgia. Of course, not all patients must receive microvascular decompression surgery, the general treatment principle is: for patients with relatively mild pain first apply drug therapy, when drug therapy is ineffective, then consider surgery; for elderly patients, especially those whose general condition is not suitable for general anesthesia, it is recommended that when drug therapy is ineffective, first choose radiofrequency treatment, which can not cure trigeminal neuralgia, but can relieve the pain within a certain period of time; for patients with trigeminal neuralgia, it is recommended that they should choose radiofrequency treatment. For patients with severe pain that seriously affects their daily life, microvascular decompression surgery should be preferred to cure trigeminal neuralgia. Therefore, the appropriate treatment plan should be chosen according to the physical condition and severity of pain of different patients. Myth 4: Misbelief in the so-called “partial and secret prescriptions”. Many patients with trigeminal neuralgia have been suffering from trigeminal neuralgia for many years, and the treatment has not been effective, so they often mistakenly believe in some so-called “biased and secret recipes” for trigeminal neuralgia. The result is that instead of reducing the pain, it leads to various complications, resulting in lifelong regrets. The most reliable way is to go to a regular hospital. Even if you want to learn about treatment information through the Internet, you should pay attention to the information provided by large medical institutions, and you should be cautious about private or purely advertising-based treatment information. In conclusion, trigeminal neuralgia is a completely curable disease, the key is to receive regular and professional treatment.