Natural history and outcome of 200 outpatients with classical trigeminal neuralgia treated with carbamazepine or oxcarbazepine in a tertiary centre for neuropathic pain

The Journal of Headache and Pain

Short Report

Giulia Di Stefano¹  Silvia La Cesa¹  Giorgio Cruccu¹  Andrea Truini¹ 

[1] Neuropathic Pain Unit, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Sapienza University, viale Università 30, 00185, Roma, Italy;

关键词: Classic trigeminal neuralgia;    Natural history;    Carbamazepine;    Oxcarbazepine;    Tolerability;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1129-2377-15-34

 received in 2014-04-29, accepted in 2014-05-30,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe guidelines on trigeminal neuralgia management that have been agreed and jointly published by the American Academy of Neurology and the European Federation of Neurological Societies recommend carbamazepine (CBZ) and oxcarbazepine (OXC) as the first-choice medical treatments in patients with trigeminal neuralgia (TN). The aim of this retrospective study was to analyze the natural history of classical trigeminal neuralgia in a large cohort of patients, focusing on drug responsiveness, side effects related to CBZ and OXC, and changes in pain characteristics during the course of disease.FindingsWe selected the last 100 consecutive patients with typical TN who began treatment with CBZ and the last 100 with OXC. All had MRI scans and a complete neurophysiological study of trigeminal reflexes. Among them, 22 were excluded on the basis of neuroradiological or neurophysiological investigations, to avoid the inclusion of patients with possible secondary TN. The initial number of responders was 98% with CBZ with a median dose of 600 mg (range 200–1200), and of 94% with OXC, with a median dose of 1200 mg (range 600–1800). In a mean period of 8.6 months, 27% of responders to CBZ incurred in undesired effects to a level that caused interruption of treatment or a dosage reduction to an unsatisfactory level. In a mean period of 13 months, the same occurred to 18% of responders to OXC. Among patients who had a good initial response, only 3 patients with CBZ and 2 with OXC developed late resistance. During the course of disease, paroxysms worsened in intensity in 3% of patients, and paroxysms duration increased in 2%. We did not observe the onset of a clinically manifest sensory deficit at any time in any patient.ConclusionsUnlike common notion, in our large patient sample the worsening of pain with time and the development of late resistance only occurred in a very small minority of patients. CBZ and OXC were confirmed to be efficacious in a large majority of patients, but the side effects caused withdrawal from treatment in an important percentage of patients. These results suggest the opportunity to develop a better tolerated drug.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Di Stefano et al.; licensee Springer. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.