Oral Facial Pain: A spotlight on Trigeminal Neuralgia and its variants for the primary care dental team

Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a debilitating facial pain condition that can significantly impact a patient’s quality of life. Typically, pain episodes are unpredictable lasting seconds to minutes, usually presenting in a unilateral distribution of the trigeminal nerve.

Patients will often seek help from primary care dental practitioners during an acute attack, in need of pain relief and support in managing the pain.

This narrative article aims to highlight the key features of TN and how the primary dental care team can actively support management of patients presenting with an acute episode of pain and avoid unnecessary, irreversible dental treatments. An overview of the key immediate and long-term management strategies that can help support these patients, and the implications of these therapies on the provision of dental care is provided.

Additionally, two of the trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias (TACs), which have similar features to TN are discussed, to enable the primary care dental team to identify this subset of primary headache conditions and support them in making onward secondary care referrals.