Minimally invasive treatment of trigeminal neuralgia

  The prevalence of trigeminal neuralgia is 182 per 100,000 people, with a prevalence in the elderly and a male to female ratio of 1:1.5. As the proportion of elderly people in China increases year by year, the prevalence of trigeminal neuralgia has been on the rise in recent years, and according to recent epidemiological statistics, its prevalence has been increasing at an annual rate of 3% in the past three years.  There are more treatment methods for trigeminal neuralgia, and the more commonly used treatment methods are: 1. Drug therapy At present, drug therapy is still the first choice, and for patients with poor drug therapy, surgical treatment can be chosen, such as microvascular decompression. The surgery does not cut the nerve and the tissue damage is light, the effect is reliable and widely used in clinical practice, and it is considered the only method that can release the cause of trigeminal neuralgia. However, patients have to bear the risk of craniotomy. Elderly patients often have heart, lung, liver, kidney and other system diseases, and are unwilling to perform craniotomy or cannot tolerate craniotomy treatment.  2.Trigeminal nerve microvascular decompression (MVD) 3.Stereotactic radiotherapy (y-knife or x-knife) 4.Percutaneous trigeminal nerve hemimelia radiofrequency thermocoagulation (RF) Percutaneous radiofrequency thermocoagulation and percutaneous microballoon compression are widely used in patients with primary trigeminal neuralgia because of their high safety, small trauma, low cost, simple equipment required, easy to repeat for many times, and high cure rate.  Radiofrequency thermocoagulation has been carried out for decades at home and abroad, and the technology has been very mature, with high selectivity and precise effect, especially suitable for trigeminal nerve branch II and III pain, but its treatment process requires the cooperation of patients.  Compared with radiofrequency thermocoagulation (RF), microballoon compression (PBC) is performed under general anesthesia without patient cooperation, and it does not damage the myelinated and unmyelinated nerve fibers associated with the corneal reflex, thus reducing the occurrence of ocular complications, and thus has obvious advantages for patients with uncooperative or trigeminal nerve branch I pain, but the failure rate of PBC for trigeminal nerve branch III pain treatment is higher. pbc The area of hyperalgesia is the affected trigeminal nerve branch I, II and III, which is wider than the RF group and lacks selectivity, and it needs to be performed under general anesthesia with tracheal intubation, and it is not suitable for microballoon compression if it cannot tolerate anesthesia.  5.Percutaneous hemianopia microballoon compression (PBC).