Diagnosing Neuralgia

Neuralgia presents a conundrum to both doctors and patients, because of the difficulty inherent in diagnosing it. Although there are common symptoms for neuralgia, such as a constant, burning pain or a short, stabbing pain (both in localized areas), these are also symptoms which accompany a variety of other disorders. For example, people with trigeminal neuralgia are often diagnosed with having toothaches or even damage to the jawbone. This can be further complicated by the irregularity of the pain attacks; remission can last for months and typically there is no lasting paralysis, although episodes are sometimes precluded by a more lasting, throbbing sensation. In extremely rare cases, localized numbness and muscle spasms accompany the pain, which can be severe enough to also disrupt regular heartbeat rhythms.
Also involved in diagnosing neuralgia is pinpointing the nerve from which the pain is originating; unfortunately, this is difficult to do, and oftentimes the origin of the pain remains unknown. The mechanisms in the nervous system that are often actually attributed to neuralgia include: overly-sensitive neural receptors, malfunctions in the ion-transfer process along neural pathways, cross-signaling between large and small fibers, or damage in the central nervous system that "misreads" peripheral signals.