Question
It is a clinical diagnosis. MRI is not necessary for the diagnosis but to confirm the compression. If there are no symptoms from trigeminal neuralgia, it may not be important to diagnose it.
There are patients occasionally who have an MRI scan where it looks like their nerves are compressed by blood vessels, but show no symptoms. So they might have trigeminal nerve compression but without the neuralgia.
Trigeminal Neuralgia is not a common disorder, but is also not as uncommon as you think. Trigeminal Neuralgia is a type of facial pain that affects half the face and has a very characteristic feature, like sharp and shooting pain. We’re not really sure what the incidence is in Singapore. There is no exact data, but around 0. 03% of the population has it. So, maybe several thousand patients have it per year.
It is not a new disorder. It has been known since the early 1800s, described and written in the medical literature. In the 1970s, people developed a surgical technique that helped to cure this problem, after which there has been more emphasis and awareness placed on disease as well.
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