Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN) is a pain syndrome characterized by intermittent, shooting pain in the face affecting the fifth (trigeminal) cranial nerve. Neuralgia means pain in the nerve; the pain is characteristically intense, sharp, episodic, periodical, excruciating, stabbing and short lasting and often accompanied by a brief facial spasm or tic. For a more detailed

Usually, this condition is dreaded by most adult men and women as they are the most age bracket to be affected by it. Although surgical operations are possible to relive the patient from this painful affliction, most of them can not stand the operation process as it more of invasive type.

Good thing, Skull Base Institute (SBI) is now doing surgeries which is minimally invasive. These less invasive skull base surgeries are possible because of the use of the endoscope. You may wonder how it is possible; well, it is because of the expertise of Dr. Shahinian, the only surgeon today to have done a lengthier and more specialized training to include skull base, craniofacial and microvascular fellowships. His skills and experiences make the Skull Base Institute qualified to perform surgical operations even with the most complex area of the human anatomy. SBI have been known to perform successful treatments and operations in more than 3,000 skull base medical conditions.

Other surgeons, physicians and even hospitals may have given up in treating such conditions, as well as Pituitary Tumor, Acoustic Neuroma, Meningioma, Craniopharyngioma, Head and Neck Tumors, Hemifacial Spasm, Rathke’s Cyst, Arachnoid Cyst, Cranoisynostosis, Chordoma, Cerebral Aneurysm and Arteriovenous Malformation, due to the danger it may pose to the patient, but Skull Base Institute is performing it and with higher percentage of success as they are the leading institute that can perform the procedure that is less invasive.
Furthermore, the endoscopic techniques employed by the institute to perform such procedure provide their patients with less complication, less pain and, of course, faster recovery as compared to traditional craniotomies.

As mentioned earlier, they also perform endoscopic techniques for the surgical procedure in pituitary tumor, in which they are the pioneer. SBI is also the world’s leading institute to perform every procedure using minimally invasive endoscopic techniques and the only institute doing fully endoscopic surgery.

The Fully Endoscopic technique was simultaneously and independently pioneered at the said institution and another major university medical center in Pittsburgh in 1996. From then on, over a thousand patients having pituitary tumors coming from different states, as well as, from other foreign nations like Australia, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Switzerland have visited SBI for the said purpose.