Evidence for Surgical Management of Facial Pain and Headache

Abstract

50 Headache and facial pain are a commonly encountered wide spectrum of complex medical conditions. Unfortunately, aside from treating trigeminal neuralgias, interest in surgical management of facial pain and headache from the neurosurgical community has been historically low. The reasons for this are multifactorial and include waning reimbursement, lack of evidence to support a number of pain procedures, and the absence of pain education in neurosurgical residency programs. In this article, we present surgical therapies currently available for headache and facial pain and review the published evidence for commonly performed neurosurgical treatments for craniofacial pains.