Neuropathic Orofacial Pain Part 2–Diagnostic Procedures, Treatment Guidelines And Case Reports
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Neuropathic orofacial pain can be difficult to diagnose because of the lack of clinical and radiographic abnormalities. Further difficulties arise if the patient exhibits significant distress and is a poor historian regarding previous diagnostic tests and treatments, such as somatosensory local anaesthetic blockade. Valuable information can be obtained by utilising the McGill Pain Questionnaire that allows the patient to choose words that describe the qualities of his/her pain in a number of important dimensions (sensory and effective). Basal pain intensity should be measured with the visual analogue scale, a simple instrument that can evaluate the efficacy of subsequent treatments. The dentist or endodontist can employ sequential analgesic blockade with topical anaesthetics and perineural administration of plain local anaesthetic to ascertain sites of neuropathology in the PNS. These can be performed in the dental chair and in a patient blinded manner. Other, more specific, tests necessitate referral to a specialist anaesthetist at a multidisciplinary pain clinic. These tests include placebo controlled lignocaine infusions for assessing neuropathic pain, and placebo controlled phentolamine infusions for sympathetically maintained pain. The treatment/management of neuropathic pain is multidisciplinary. Medication rationalisation utilises first-line antineuropathic drugs including tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline and nortriptyline, and possibly an anticonvulsant such as carbamazepine, sodium valproate, or gabapentin if there are sharp, shooting qualities to the pain. Mexiletine, an antiarrhythmic agent and lignocaine analogue, may be considered following a positive patient response to a lignocaine infusion. All drugs need to be titrated to achieve maximum therapeutic effect and minimum side effects. Topical applications of capsaicin to the gingivae and oral mucosa are a simple and effective treatment in two out of three patients suffering from neuropathic orofacial pain. Temporomandibular disorder is present in two thirds of patients and should be assessed and treated with physiotherapy and where appropriate, occlusal splint therapy. Attention to the patient's psychological status is crucial and requires the skill of a clinical psychologist and/or psychiatrist with pain clinic experience. Psychological variables include distress, depression, expectations of treatment, motivation to improve, and background environmental factors. Unnecessary dental treatment to "remove the pain" with dental extractions is contraindicated and aggravates neuropathic orofacial pain.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.012 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".