Atypical Facial Pain

Abstract

A perplexed group of patients do exists in which no clear organic or psychiatric cause for the complaint of facial pain can be ascertained. They describe their symptoms in unusual ways: like the character of pain being boring, bursting, and twisting of drawing. Occasionally there may be an element of ache of sharply painful element superimposed in such a case: but this is periodic in nature. Such patients usually relate their symptoms to deep structures and less frequently to cutaneous. The other important factor is that their complaints are beyond the somato-sensory borders or autonomic neural pathways. The factors which provoke or aggravate the pain are seldom known. The patients are usually women of neurotic behavior.