title: [Treatment of primary trigeminal neuralgia with radiofrequency thermogangliocoagulation: Report of 152 consecutive cases].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the clinical results of primary trigeminal neuralgia treated by RFT and investigate the methods to manage complications.
  
  
  METHODS
  152 cases of primary trigeminal neuralgia were collected from 2001 to 2004, a retrospective study was undertaken to analyze the clinical characters such as effective rate, ineffective rate and the rate of complications of patients treated with RFT.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The average age of the 152 cases was 48.9 years old, the rate of male to female was 1:1.3. The effective rate of primary trigeminal neuralgia treated with RFT was 94.1%, the ineffective rate was 2.6%;another 3.3% cases gave up or altered to other methods, the rate of complications was 15.8%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  RFT is an effective method to treat primary trigeminal neuralgia with few severe complications and low mortality rate, which can save the sense of touch partly. Recurrent cases can be retreated with RFT.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Stomatology Hospital of Xuzhou City. Xuzhou 221002, Jiangsu Province, China. liuchao2299@sina.com
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Zheng-Guo
authors.initials: ZG
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Peng-Lai
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D004564:Electrocoagulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014277:Trigeminal Neuralgia / Q000601:surgery*