Quantitative sensory testing analysis on idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia treated by adriamycin under the guidance of CT

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the changes of pain and sensory function in patients with idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia (ITN) treated by adriamycin interventional treatment, and to explore their correlation. Methods A total of 23 patients with ITN were treated by adriamycin interventional treatment guided via CT. Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) was used to evaluate the degree of pain before treatment and 1 d, 7 d, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months after treatment. Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) was used to measure cold sensation (CS), warm sensation (WS), cold pain (CP) and hot pain (HP) threshold value of chin at the affected side. Results Compared with before treatment, VAS scores decreased at 1 d, 7 d, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months after treatment (P = 0.000, for all). One month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months after treatment, CS (P = 0.003, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000) and CP (P = 0.022, 0.000, 0.000, 0.013) decreased, while WS (P = 0.004, 0.002, 0.000, 0.000) and HP (P = 0.004, 0.002, 0.000, 0.000) increased. Pearson correlation analysis showed VAS scores were positively correlated with CS (r = 0.703, P = 0.000) and CP (r = 0.679, P = 0.002), and negatively correlated with WS (r = -0.782, P = 0.000) and HP (r = -0.726, P = 0.001) after adriamycin interventional treatment. Conclusions QST was confirmed as noninvasive, simple and objective measurement. It could be used to quantificationally analyze the damage of sensory nervous function and could be a valuable index in evaluating the curative effect of trigeminal nerve destruction.

Keywords

• Trigeminal neuralgia
• Adriamycin (not in MeSH)
• Sensory thresholds
• Tomography, X-ray computed