Efficacy of Laser Therapy in Trigeminal Neuralgia; A Systematic Review

Statement of the Problem:

 Trigeminal neuralgia is the most common and disabling type of neuralgia in craniofacial region. Because of adverse effects of first and second lines of treatment, new modalities including laser therapy have been investigated for treatment of trigeminal neuralgia.

The aim of this study was to review the effect of laser in trigeminal neuralgia. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct and Embase databases from December 1983 to August 2020 were searched using keywords “trigeminal neuralgia” and “laser”. Our inclusion criteria were interventional studies with a randomized clinical trial design, which used laser for treatment of trigeminal neuralgia.

A total of 269 records were identified through systematically searching aforementioned databases among which, 30 were from PubMed and 44 were from Web of Science. A total of 111 records were duplicated and were therefore removed.

Only 17 records were considered relevant after reading title and abstracts. After reading full texts of the articles, 13 met the eligibility criteria and were included in our review.

This review revealed that low-level laser therapy reduces pain in trigeminal neuralgia specially diode lasers, although there are no standardized protocols for laser procedures.