Anesthesia dolorosa (case report)

Abstract

Anesthesia dolorosa is a complication of ablative lesions of the trigeminal nerve or its branches. Such pain burns and throbs continuously. No pharmacological or ablative surgical treatment is effective for anesthesia dolorosa. For this reason, it is important that unnecessary invasive procedures should be avoided in order to decrease its incidence. The necessity for invasive procedures should be determined by prognostic block evaluation. A forty-year-old man, to whom mental block had been applied, followed by glyserol injection and neuroctomy due to continued pain, was admitted to our pain clinic with a burning sensation in the left region of the lower lip. He was diagnosed as having anesthesia dolorosa. In this case study, our aim was to determine the reasons, principles of diagnosis and treatment of anesthesia dolorosa.