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cause of occipital and trigeminal neuralgia
by kimberly1234, Jul 07, 2008 08:08PM
Hi, I was diagnosed 8 months ago with trigeminal and occipital neuralgia by a neurologist...I have a pretty clean medical history and I am also an RN for many years...I am a 47 y/o female...I woke up one morning with pain, soreness at the suboccipital area, right side...radiating over my ear and even right eye pain...An internal med doc thought it was tmj...i continued to have pain, continuous, all day long and decided to go to a neurologist...he sent me for MRI brain w/without contrast and cspine without...I was diagnosed as well with herniated C5-6 herniated disc...I had really no shoulder, hand pain or numbness...my main symptoms were occipital area around ear, temporal area and right eye..one-side only....he placed me on neurontin...since then I have controlled pain but can tell there is still some slight sensation there...my neurologist said he thought that I would have problem for a long time from that nerve and felt the neuralgia was secondary to my herniated disc...I went and had manual traction on a high tech system and have had some slight improvement but not total.....I would love to come off that neurontin, but do you from your experience feel that the particular neuralgias I am experiencing could in fact be caused due to C5-6 herniated disc? My MRI scan of the brain was normal...A friend who is a sports medicine physician, who actually does this manual traction treatment says it isn't possible...that there has to be another cause....what is your opinion?
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It is rather unlikely that the trigeminal and occipital neuralgias are caused by disc herniation found lower in the cervical spine. If ever, this level of herniation can cause pain or numbness symptoms on the arms and hands on the same side. Indeed, the real cause of trigeminal and occipital neuralgias are still a mystery and treatment os directed towards addressing the pain. This will really take a good physician patient relationship and I hope that your symptoms will continue to improve. Regards.