Clinical factors and safety of microvascular decompression in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia

Abstract

Objectives: This study was aimed to investigate the clinical factors and safety of Microvascular Decompression (MVD) in the treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN). Methods: The clinical characteristics, intraoperative findings, effectivity, side-effects and score of 215 patients treated with MVD were analysed. The degree of compression of vessels on nerve root was classified into six categories: no contact compression, simple contact, contact and displacement, simple adhesion, adhesion and displacement, and atrophy. Postoperative outcomes included excellent, good, favorable, failure, recurrence, and dead within a follow-up time of 37 months. Results: Degree of postoperative pain relief were influenced by the factors like: whether symptoms are typical or not, age, duration of disease, whether the results of 3D-tof examination is positive or not, treatment methods before MVD, degree of compression on nerve (p<0.05, the correlation was significant), while the gender, the pain location, implicated nerve branch, hypertension, type and quantity of offending vessels were not related to postoperative outcomes. Among them, excellent accounted for 87.9%, good for 4.2%. Patients without pain, complication, nor need of medicine treatment accounted for 74.7%. Conclusion: Though therapeutic effects of MVD in the treatment of TN is affected by the age of onset, duration of disease and whether symptoms are typical or not, it is surely a safe and effective treatment method.