Glossopharyngeal neuralgia: A cause of cardiac arrest

Epidemiology and Clinical Features of Idiopathic Trigeminal Neuralgia and Glossopharyngeal Neuralgia: Similarities and Differences, Rochester, Minnesota, 1945-1984

“…Our comparison of these two conditions indicates that although TN is more common than GN, GN occurred more often in this community than studies using selected re ferral series [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] would suggest. Studies reported from neurosurgical or neurology re ferral centers, subject to problems of potential selection bias [5], reported a wide range for the TN to GN ratio: from 38:1 to 88:1 in docu mented studies [6,8,9,13], and from 40:1 to as high as 133:1 in the studies with statements only [7, 10-12, 14, 15], Even when our study was limited to those who had surgical treat ment (the group more likely to attend referral centers), the ratio of 13:1 is still much less than the above ratios of TN to GN.…”

“…Most referral studies of TN and GN re port that the two are similar clinical entities, and that the only major difference is the location of the pain [7,9,10,[16][17][18][19][20]. In con trast, a few neurologists and neurosurgeons suggest that they are dissimilar [8,12,14,21], Comparisons in our population-based studies also suggest that in spite of their sim ilarities, there are obvious differences in the clinical features of these two neuralgias: GN is a milder disease than TN, both men and women are more often affected with TN than with GN, the right trigeminal nerve is more often affected than the glossopharyn geal nerve of the same side, a higher propor tion of GN cases are bilateral, and TN pa tients are more often affected with multiple sclerosis than GN patients.…”

Glossopharyngeal Neuralgia

“…The relative frequency of glossopharyngeal neuralgia with respect to trigeminal neuralgia has been reported to range widely; 1:40 (48,11,10) 49), and, an early mis-estimate, 1:500 (58, echoed by 22). A ratio of 1:75 seems to reflect reality most faithfully.…”

“…Trauma.-Caused by missiles (112,88,134), tonsillectomy (48,135,77,92,136,129), post-roentgen-irradiation cicatrix (35), post-cerebello-pontine craniotomy (47), unspecified (Waga 180), impacted wisdom tooth (137), and dental extraction (138,139). Svaton (140) reported a dubious case with a post-traumatic foramen lacerum syndrome.…”

Vagoglossopharyngeal neuralgia with syncope in the course of carcinomatous meningitis

“…There have been a few reports of cases in the form secondary to an elongated styloid process [7], to extracranial vascular impairment [3], to tumors, all extracranial [6,10,11,15,18,23,24] and in this connexion it is worth noting that parapharyngeal space-occupying lesions cause cardiovascular vagoglossopharyngeal neuralgia if they involve the proximal segment of the nerve, after the conflunce of Hering's nerve [23]. The first authors who described the "cardiovascular type" of vagoglossopharyngeal neuralgia thought in terms of vagal hyperactivity with bradycardia and/or asystolia and consequent arterial hypotension [16,17]. In about 50% of cases syncope was accompanied by convulsions, interpreted as a consequence of cerebral hypoxia secondary to the hypotension, although there is a report of vagoglossopharyrtgeal neuralgia associated with convulsions without asystolia or arterial hy-potension [21].…”