46-year old undergoes surgery at district hospital for 'suicide disease'

Ever heard of suicide disease? Few years before it was in the news, after Salman Khan opened about it in an interview. Medically known as Trigeminal neuralgia, suicide disease is termed so because of the unbearable pain it puts on the patients.
Recently, a 46 year old man was treated for Trigeminal Neuralgia at a hospital in Lucknow. He was experiencing severe pain on the right side of his face for six years.Despite using painkillers and undergoing treatments since the age of 40, he found no relief. Ashok sought help from Dr Vinod Tiwari, a neurosurgeon at Balrampur Hospital. Dr Tiwari noted that Kumar’s right facial pain was triggered by minor activities such as wind, brushing his teeth, gargling, eating, drinking water, or a light touch on his right cheek, causing him hours of excruciating pain. “I told him if it is not cured by medicines, then surgery is the only solution,” said Dr Tiwari.
MRI scan revealed that an artery was compressing the fifth nerve on the right side of Kumar’s brain, leading to unbearable pain. The medical team decided to perform surgery to relieve the compression and ease the patient’s suffering. The operation, which took over three hours under general anaesthesia, was successful. Ashok is currently recovering in ICU ward, news agency IANS reported.

Trigeminal neuralgia is a chronic pain condition affecting the trigeminal nerve, which carries sensation from the face to the brain. Characterized by sudden, severe facial pain that can feel like electric shocks or stabbing sensations, trigeminal neuralgia typically affects one side of the face and can be triggered by even mild stimuli such as touching the face, chewing, or brushing teeth.
The pain episodes can be debilitating, lasting from a few seconds to minutes, and may occur in clusters throughout the day. The exact cause of trigeminal neuralgia is often attributed to compression of the trigeminal nerve by a blood vessel or structural changes in the brain, although sometimes it can occur without a clear underlying cause.

Treatment options for trigeminal neuralgia include medications to alleviate nerve pain (such as anticonvulsants and muscle relaxants), nerve blocks, and in severe cases, surgical interventions like microvascular decompression or gamma knife radiosurgery to relieve pressure on the nerve. Managing trigeminal neuralgia requires a multidisciplinary approach involving neurologists, pain specialists, and sometimes neurosurgeons to tailor treatments to the individual's symptoms and improve quality of life.