Professor Robert Chen
Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Neurophysiology
Gianfranco De Stefano, Cristina Mollica, Caterina Leone, Eleonora Galosi, Giuseppe Di Pietro, Pietro Falco, Nicoletta Esposito, Daniel Litewczuk, Enrico Evangelisti, Francesca Caramia, Andrea Truini, Giulia Di Stefano
Trigeminal neuralgia is a common condition with severe paroxysmal facial pain. In this volume of Clinical Neurophysiology, De Stefano et al. applied two established neurophysiology methods, the blink reflex and the masseter inhibitory reflex, to assess the trigeminal system in 114 patients with trigeminal neuralgia. The results showed that trigeminal reflex latency asymmetry longer than 0.5 ms was predictive of classical trigeminal neuralgia due to neurovascular compression while involvement of the second and third division of the trigeminal nerve was associated with idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia. These findings suggest that neurovascular compression leads to focal demyelination of trigeminal fibers and clinical neurophysiology could play a role in distinguishing between different causes of trigeminal neuralgia.