Rhizotomy is where we use a needle to go through the cheek to reach the nerve near the base of the brain. It's quite a long needle. There is no specific contraindication per se, things like patients being on anticoagulant medication being the key one.
I think the main thing in terms of choosing rhizotomy versus something else is the symptom duration and how long the patient expects to be controlled like I said rhizotomy does not last so long and there is a higher failure rate. So maybe it is useful as an acute treatment but maybe not a good treatment long term unless the patients are ok with it being repeated every so often.
