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Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffYour doctor will review your medical history and ask you to describe your pain — how severe it is, what part of your face it affects, how long it lasts and what seems to trigger it. You'll also undergo a neurological examination, during which your doctor examines and touches parts of your face to try to determine exactly where the pain is occurring and — if you appear to have trigeminal neuralgia — which branches of the trigeminal nerve may be affected.
You may need to have a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of your head, which can show if multiple sclerosis is causing trigeminal neuralgia.
Facial pain can be caused by many different disorders, so an accurate diagnosis is important. Your doctor may order additional tests to rule out other conditions.
