IN 1962 Blom1,2 at our clinic discovered a new treatment for trigeminal neuralgia. Carbamazepine (Tegretol) [G-32883, 5H-& dibenz (b, f) azepine-5 carboxamide] made the pain disappear within 24 hours in 36 out of 40 cases. Several authors4-10 have confirmed this experience. Spillane,7 writing on carbamazepine in trigeminal neuralgia, mentioned in passing, without details, that a patient with glossopharyngeal neuralgia improved.
Glossopharyngeal neuralgia is much less common than trigeminal neuralgia. Over a period of 30 years, Bohm and Strang3 found only 18 cases in the neurosurgical department at the Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm. According to them, there was only one case of glossopharyngeal neuralgia for every 100 cases of trigeminal neuralgia. For this reason it is difficult to collect a large series. During the last five years we have treated four cases of glossopharyngeal neuralgia in Uppsala against 152 cases of trigeminal neuralgia.
Report of Cases
CASE