Few Neurological Disorders
• Trigeminal Neuralgia (Tic Douloureux)
Trigeminal neuralgia is sudden, severe facial pain.
It's often described as a sharp shooting pain or like having an electric
shock in the jaw, teeth or gums.
It usually happens in short, unpredictable attacks that can last from a
few seconds to about 2 minutes.
The attacks stop as suddenly as they start.
• Episodes of severe, shooting or jabbing pain that may feel like an
electric shock.
• Spontaneous attacks of pain or attacks triggered by things such as
touching the face, chewing, speaking or brushing teeth
• Twitching, grimacing of facial muscles
• Involvement of 5th CN
• Causes –infections in sinuses, teeth,
mouth or irritation of nerve from pressure
Nursing Interventions
• Identify and avoid stimuli that exacerbate the attack
• Medication: Tegretol, analgesics
• Avoid rubbing eye
• Chew on the opposite side of the mouth
• Treatment: alcohol injection to nerve, resection of nerve
• Bell’s Palsy (Facial paralysis)
• is a condition that causes sudden weakness in the muscles on one
side of the face.
• In most cases, the weakness is temporary and significantly improves
over weeks.
• The weakness makes half of the face appear to droop. Smiles are one-
sided, and the eye on the affected side resists closing
• Involvement – 7th CN
• Causes: Vascular ischemia, viral diseases, edema, inflammatory
diseases
Nursing Interventions
• Protect head from cold
• Administer analgesics
• Assist in elec stimulation
• Massage, warm packs
• Provide support for altered body image
• Prevent corneal abrasion (artificial tears)
• Treatment – elec stimulation, analgesics, steroid
• Recovery: 3-5 weeks
• Acoustic Neuroma
• is a benign tumor that develops on the balance (vestibular) and
hearing, or auditory (cochlear) nerves leading from your inner ear to
the brain.
• The pressure on the nerve from the tumor may cause hearing loss
and imbalance
S/Sx
• Deafness – partial initially
• Twitching, grimacing of facial muscles
• Dizziness
• Causes: benign tumor of the 8th CN
Nursing Interventions
• Pre and post op care for posterior fossa craniotomy
• Comfort measures: assist in turning head and neck
• Treatment: surgical incision of tumor
• Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS)
• is a rare neurological disorder in which the immune system
mistakenly attacks part of the peripheral nervous system—the
network of nerves located outside of the brain and spinal cord.
• The exact cause of Guillain-Barre syndrome is unknown.
• But two-thirds of patients report symptoms of an infection in the six
weeks preceding.
• These include a COVID-19, respiratory or a gastrointestinal infection
or Zika virus.
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
• is a progressive nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the
brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control. ALS is often
called Lou Gehrig's disease, after the baseball player who was
diagnosed with it.
Risk factors for ALS include:
Age—Although the disease can strike at any
age, symptoms most commonly develop
between the ages of 55 and 75.
Biological sex—Males are slightly more likely to
develop ALS. However, as people age the
difference between the sexes disappears.
Race and ethnicity—Caucasians and non-
Hispanics are most likely to develop the
disease, but ALS affects people of all races and
ethnic backgrounds.
