Do the drugs prevent or decrease the pain?

Gabapentin prevents pain. It works. Y decreasing conducting in nerves thus preventing pain

You have to take it daily on going to build drug levels up

I'm a tn patient also on gabapentin

I'm also a pharmacist

gabapentin numbs my pain but my is constantly hurting but i had too add oxcarbazepine but i cant stand the side effects

Dneutontin worked for about 3 months...no pain. Then it came back and went on carbazepine then ox carbazepine..not much helped. Then lyrica which helped with pain nicely but the side effects were awful.  So had a surgery which got rid of pain completely and got off the awful drugs.

still it returns in a few years...I feel completely screwed but hey, it isn't cancer or diabetes or congestive heart failure!

the Radiofrequency surgery got me off drugs and back into having a life!  A major yay!

In my case I'm on Carbamazepine which acts as an anticonvulsant and a pain killer. The former effect tends to "slow down" or decrease the frequency of the trigeminal nerve firing, and other cranial nerves of course. Its best effects are when you've got a good level of the drug in the circulation. So there's no point in taking it just when you have pain. I can knock my dose up to quite high levels without too many nasty side effects but still get breakthroughs, but they are much less intensity. You can't just stop Carbamaz quickly otherwise there's a risk of having a seizure, so reduce dose slowly over several days

In my case Carbanaz doesn't stop pain at all, just reduces the severity, but have to keep levels up to do this.

Bid D

What Amy says is true about all the medications for TN pain. They take a while ti increase to a level that stops the pain and to decrease to get off, but I am sure your doctor has already told you this. He or she should tell you how high  you can go and how slow you go to get off of it.

when first diagnised for TGN i was presribed carbamazepin which worked very well but unfortunately effected kidney function so had to stop . Gabaapentin was prescibed but did not help for pain and side effects were unplesant. Changed to Lamotrigine incresing dose slowly and pain stabilised at 100mg twice a day, but with occasinal pain episoded sometimes quite severe . Thats when I  agreed to have MVD surgery . Remained pain free for about  2 years but pain came back with vengeance whilst we were holiday . 

Hi,

As others have said the two types of drugs work in different ways. The Carbamazepine and other anticonvulsants interrupt the nerve impulses and so reduce the number of impulses and/or the frequency of them. The other drugs designed for neuropathic pain block the neurotransmission (or reception, I never remember which!!) of the signal to the Brain (or at the site of pain). In doing so the TN sufferer experience much less pain and less often.

You do need to take them regularly and at a dose which works for you. Which means that you have to build up the serum levels in your blood until you reach an effective dose.And then continue at that dose! Your GP/Doc or Neurologist should advise you on how to go about doing this.

Best of luck.

Thank you everyone for your replies.  And no my doctor has never explained to me how the drugs work.  I have atypical TN.  I had the electrical shock like pain for a few hours then I was diagnosed and put on meds.  My pain now is more of a soreness, burning, pinching sensation of varying degrees of severity.  I had an allergic reaction to both carbamazepine and oxcarbazine (sp?).  And I get side effects to gabapentin and lyrica at very low doses.  The drugs are worse than the pain, so I am looking for a way to take the least amount of drugs.  At one point I was up to 2700 mg of gabapentin a day and it made no difference in my pain.  After my last drug reaction the doctor took me off everything, gradually and for a few days I was on nothing....it was wonderful.  I am currently on gabapentin 100 mg tid and I hope not to increase it until absolutely necessary.

Any ideas or suggestions?