Presentation summary

Introduction :
Treatment of trijeminal nerve neuritis is mostly difficult. Pain is the main symptom that leads the patient to pain treatment center. However the result is sometimes disappointing even if several drugs are used such as Gabapentine and carbamazepine.
We report successfull treatment of 3 patients suffering from Neuritis of the trijeminal nerve secondary to herpes zoster virus by acupuncture treatment.

Method :
Three Patients were treated for ophtalmic neuritis. Two experienced psychologic violent chock before herpes zoster rash appeard : recent death of 2 children (case 1, 86 years old) and lost of her husband (case 3, 79years old). The third one had dental care on canine tooth (case 2, 83 years old). They all had been suffering fora long period (respectively 7months, 3 months and 10 years) before meeting the acupuncture practitionner. They first received occidental treatment (lamaline, paracetamol, ketoprofène). Then the algologist recommended amitryptiline, gabapentine, carbamazepine ot even botulic toxin. All these therapeutics failed.Finally they all had traditional chinese medicine diagnosis by chinese pulse, and tongue observation and received auricular puncture (shen men, liver reticular area, amygdala, heart, brain stem, limbic system, occiputarea, eyes), body acupuncture (yintang, San Jiao 5, liver 3, large intestin 4 and 11, gall blader 37 and 20,bladder 10, 11 and 60, Lung 1 and 7, Kidney 27). At homolateral side yuyao, gall bladder 1, bladder 2, and taiyang were punctured, while the controlateral side had gall bladder 1, 8 and 14, san jiao 22 and 23). All ofthem received TENS electropuncture (CEFAR Chattanooga, Program 2Hz) on gall bladder 20 for 30 minutes

Results :
Immediately after the first session pain decreased from 8 -9 to 0 (on the analogic scale). Semi permanent needles were placed on the main auricular area till the next session. Before the second session ( 2 weekslater) The pain was back but not so hawfull and the…