Surgical treatment of primary trigeminal neuralgia: comparison of the effectiveness between MVD and MVD+PSR in a series of 210 patients.

AIM

To evaluate the effectiveness of microvascular-decompression (MVD) or MVD+partial-sensory-rhizotomy (PSR) on the treatment of primary trigeminal neuralgia (TN).

MATERIAL AND METHODS

210 TN patients were retrospectively studied, among which there're 142 cases underwent MVD and 68 cases underwent MVD+PSR.

RESULTS

In MVD group, pain vanished in 128, obviously relieved in 9, and 137 cases were profited from MVD. In 82 cases with a follow-up over 2 years, pain vanished in 74, pain sometime occurred in 5 which could be relieved by oral medicine, 3 cases could not be controlled effectively by medicine. In MVD+PSR group, pain completely vanished in 67 cases, not changed in 1 case. In 47 cases with a follow-up over 2 years, pain sometime occurred in 2 which could be relieved by carbamazepine, the others were completely pain-free. The short-term pain-free rate of MVD+PSR group was obviously higher than MVD group(P < 0.05), after a follow-up over 2 years, the former was still higher than the later, 95.7% and 90.2% respectively, without significant difference in statistics.

CONCLUSION

MVD+PSR was obviously superior to MVD in completely eliminating pain in short-term period after operation, however, longer pain-free rate need even longer time to follow up. Identifying the responsible vascular exactly and handling it reasonably were key to both groups.