Joined: 15 Feb 2008 Posts: 85 Location: Chicago, IL
Woman's TMJ Pain Totally Gone After Brain Surgery Posted: 04-23-08 22:43pm
DENVER (CBS4) ― Imagine pain so
unbearable some people are driven to
suicide. That's the kind of suffering a
young Denver woman has endured for ten
years, but now she is pain free thanks to
brain surgery that barely left a scar.
Jordan Lucy called it life changing. She
endured terrible pain in the right side of
her face, but after a state-of-the-art
operation and a little Teflon, she's a new
woman.
Ten years ago, Lucy was diagnosed with
temporomandibular joint (TMJ) -- pain in
the jaw.
"Stabbing, shooting, electric; what I
usually describe to people is that it
feels like someone is taking a knife to my
face," Lucy said. "Over the years it's
just progressively gotten worse to the
point where it's basically unbearable."
Jordan had days when she couldn't eat, or
even talk. A gust of wind would set off a
spasm. Desperate, she searched the Web and
found a condition that matched her
symptoms.
"It's trigeminal neuralgia, which is
essentially a compression of the facial
nerve," she said.
Medication can treat the problem, but
27-year-old Lucy hoped for a cure. She
went to the Skull Base Institute in Los
Angeles to undergo brain surgery to
relieve the pain for good.
Through just a dime-sized hole in the
skull behind the ear, Surgeon Hrayr
Shahinian used tiny instruments he
designed to separate the nerve responsible
for sensation in the face from the blood
vessel that compressed it. He then
inserted a small Teflon disk as a buffer.
"It is an insulator and it prevents the
nerve from being stimulated," Shahinian
said.
Shahinian also deadened two veins that
were part of the problem.
Lucy spent two days in the hospital. She
is back at work and a new woman.
"Absolutely no pain whatsoever," Lucy
said. "It's completely gone … I feel
like I can do whatever I want. I don't
have to worry anymore, which is a huge
weight off my shoulders."
Jordan delights these days in things like
eating a steak and chewing gum.
Shahinian developed the minimally invasive
approach to brain surgery and has done
thousands of operations on a number of
conditions, including facial twitching and
brain tumors
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edgaras
Supporter
Joined: 15 Feb 2008 Posts: 85 Location: Chicago, IL
poor journalism .. but Posted: 04-23-08 22:46pm
Article is written by someone who knows
nothing about mediciine. They mixed up
TMJ and TMD (people do not get TMJ, they
get TMD). And then they throw in the
trigeminal neuralgia thing in there... So
is TMD, is it TMJ, is it trigeminal
neuralgia..
Anyways, it is promising procedure, maybe
it can help people with temporal
mandibular disorder as well, given that
the joint is OK, and it is the nerve that
is compressed.
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Tmddyan
Moderator
Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 4346 Location: post falls, id usa
Thanks: 93
Thanked:63
Posted: 04-24-08 00:12am
ok TMJ stands for temporomandibular joint
which every one has 2 of--TMD is for
temporomandibular disorder. the brain is
rarely involved if ever. they probably
just went and cauterized teh area of the
brain that that nerve sends messages to. I
know im not planing on getting brain
surgery to take care of this
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edgaras
Supporter
Joined: 15 Feb 2008 Posts: 85 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: 04-28-08 20:58pm
Noone is forcing you.. This post was to
illustrate how much people do not know
about TMJ/trigeminnotal neuralgia. What
they did was probably not a brain surgery
at all, but commonly performed
decompression of trigeminal nerve, except
for the use of Teflon, which is scary to
considering having inside - last time I
checked it was listed as potential
carcinogen.
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Tmddyan
Moderator
Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 4346 Location: post falls, id usa
Thanks: 93
Thanked:63
Posted: 04-29-08 10:03am
yes but you understand that this can be
misconstrued
