Complex Management of Pain in Trigeminal Neuralgia: A Meta Analysis

<b>Introduction: </b> Severe pain in patients with trigeminal neuralgia is known to affect the psychological, physical, and social aspects of the patient. The more severe and prolonged the disease, the pain can become more frequent, increasing the patient's anxiety about pain that may occur at any time. To prevent this, pain management in trigeminal neuralgia needs more attention to improve patient comfort and quality of life.<b>Aim:</b> To identify therapeutic options in managing chronic pain in trigeminal neuralgia.<b>Materials and methods:</b> This article compares five articles from the "PubMed" and "Google Scholar" databases. The literature search was conducted using the keywords combination "Trigeminal Neuralgia," "Treatment," and "Pain Outcome."<b>Results:</b> All five articles used the VAS and NRS pain scales. Each article applied different intervention; such as microvascular decompression (MVD), Trigeminal Nerve block, pharmacotherapy, radiofrequency ablation (RF ablation), and one article used a combination of electroacupuncture and pharmacotherapy. All showed pain improvement in the medium term, as indicated by decreased VAS and NRS scores.<b>Conclusions:</b> Treatment options for trigeminal neuralgia include pharmacotherapy and invasive interventions. All of the analyzed articles demonstrated that these therapies are effective in providing pain relief for trigeminal neuralgia, while percutaneous radiofrequency ablation is superior to the other therapies due to its significant improvement in pain score.