www.ijbcp.com International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology | August 2019 | Vol 8 | Issue 8 Page 1930 IJBCP International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Print ISSN: 2319-2003 | Online ISSN: 2279-0780 Review Article Trigeminal neuralgia: recent approach in classification, diagnosis and management Arvind Narwat 1 *, Anjali Sindhu 2 , Suneel Kumar 1 INTRODUCTION The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) has defined pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage”. 1 Pain and fear of pain continue to be the commonest and strongest motivation for the people to seek facial pain treatment. Pain is a personal experience of the sufferer that cannot be shared and wholly belongs to the sufferer. Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a notable facial pain disorder characterized by sudden, severe, brief, stabbing or lancinating recurrent episodes of pain in the distribution of one or more branches of the trigeminal nerve. 2 It is one of the classical neuropathic pain condition that have been known for centuries. The first known description of trigeminal neuralgia or a similar condition was written in second century AD by Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a contempary of Galen, making reference to a pain in which ‘spasm and distortion of the countenance take place. 3 The first full account of trigeminal neuralgia was published in 1773 when John Forthergill presented a paper to the Medical Society Of London. He described the typical features of the condition in detail, including paroxysms of unilateral facial pain, evoked by eating or speaking or touch, starting and ending abruptly and associated with anxiety. 3 ABSTRACT Pain and fear of pain continue to be the commonest and strongest motivation for the people to seek facial pain treatment. Pain is a personal experience of the sufferer that cannot be shared and wholly belongs to the sufferer. Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a notable facial pain disorder resulting in periodic severe pain that produces one of the most severe kinds of pain known to mankind. Treatment of this debilitating condition may be varied, ranging from medical to surgical interventions. However antiepileptic drugs are commonly used for its treatment. This article brings out the recent approaches in diagnosis and treatment of trigeminal neuralgia. Keywords: Botulinum toxin, Drug treatment, Microvascular decompression, Pregabalin, Surgical treatment, Trigeminal neuralgia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2319-2003.ijbcp20193189 1 Department of Pharmacology, 2 Department of Pathology, B.P.S. Government Medical College for Women, Khanpur, Kalan, Sonipat, Haryana, India Received: 27 May 2019 Revised: 01 July 2019 Accepted: 09 July 2019 *Correspondence to: Dr. Arvind Narwat, Email:arvindnarwat16@ gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open- access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.