Hemifacial Diagnosis & treatment

Namaste! What is Hemifacial Spasm? What are the symptoms of the disease? What is its treatment?

These and more questions will be answered by renowned neurosurgeon Dr jayadev Panchwagh.

Interviewer: Namaste Doctor!

Dr Jaydev Panchwagh: Namaste! For diagnosis of Hemifacial spasms, an MRI is required.  In neurosurgery, the symptoms are distant from the organ of disease, unlike other organs of the body. For example: The pain in the back of thigh caused by sciatica is actually a symptom of a problem of compression of nerve roots at the level of the spinal cord, A symptom of imbalance while walking could be because of a problem in the cervical spine (neck), there is contraction of the facial muscles in hemifacial spasm…and the cause is a problem in the brain. This is one of the reasons that patients do not readily co-relate their symptoms with the organ that is diseased. Whereas in the pain of a heart attack, the diagnosis may easily be recognized by the patient or their relative.

Many a time, when patient is told that that they have Hemifacial spasm or Trigeminal neuralgia, they feel that they need to get an MRI of the face done! Instead, a brain MRI is actually necessary. This actually helps in studying the facial nerve in very small MRI slices to find out in great detail about the nerve and its relation to surrounding blood vessels. This will help to determine whether one or more blood vessels is compressing it. It also helps to diagnose if there is a tumour causing the compression etc. Special sequences in the MRI give us all the information we want, and getting the MRI done in specialised centres that give us this specific information is of utmost importance. This is necessary before we plan surgery.

Interviewer: After the diagnosis and investigations, we need to discuss treatment.

Dr Jaydev Panchwagh: If the patient desires cure from Hemifacial spasm, then surgery is the only option. A Micro-Vascular Decompression or MVD surgery is the surgery for Hemifacial spasm.

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