Prevalence of trigeminal neuralgia in patients visiting dental OPD of a dental college in Kanpur: A demographic study

Abstract Aims and objectives: Tic douloureux is another name for trigeminal neuralgia (TN). The first report of TN can be found in the writing of Avicenna in the 11th century, but John Fothergill gave the modern description of TN in his 1773 paper on the subject. The present study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of Trigeminal Neuralgia (TGN) among north Indian population. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study on the prevalence of Trigeminal neuralgia was conducted in the outpatient department of Oral Medicine and Radiology during a period of 5 years (1 January 2015 to 31 December 2019) months. All selected patients over the age of 18 were asked for their TN history using a structured questionnaire based on diagnostic criteria of trigeminal neuralgia according to the beta-version of the 3rd edition of the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD3-beta) after acquiring their personal data (name, age, gender and address).Descriptive statistics included calculation of means and percentages. Data distribution was assessed for normality using Shapiro-Wilk test to check whether a sample came from a normally distributed population or not. The chi-square test is used to determine whether there is a significant difference between the expected frequencies and the observed frequencies in one or more categories. Student’s t-test was used to test the means between the samples. All values were considered statistically significant for a value of p<0.05. Results: Results: Out of 1500 patients, 26.67%were male and 73.33% were female. The peak incidence was in the age range of 60-70 years. Maxillary nerve (71.1%) was most commonly is involved followed by mandibular (20.2%) and ophthalmic (8.7%) nerve. The right side of the face (80%) was more involved than the left side (20%) of the face. The majority of patients described their attack as a shock like and of spontaneous onset. Conclusion: TN is often misdiagnosed as toothache, resulting in root canal therapy and tooth extractions. To recognize and manage this problem, an interprofessional strategy involving the primary care physician, dentist, neurologist, anesthesiologist, and neurosurgeon is required. Correct diagnosis and management can benefit patients and result in a good prognosis.