Classification of Facial Pain: A Clinician's Perspective

Successful management of facial pain starts with making correct diagnosis. Diagnostic errors, particularly early on in evaluation of facial pain patients are not uncommon, and some of this may be related to the lack of uniform classification that would satisfy needs of different specialists. Here, we critically review several most common classification schemes and try to compare and contrast their strength and unique features. We also attempt to link multiple terminologies describing same clinical conditions and provide a rationale for developing a unified nosological approach. Based on our findings, we conclude that despite many previous attempts, much work needs to be done to create a universally accepted, comprehensive but at the same time simple and user-friendly, facial pain classification, with the ultimate goal of integrating such classification into a treatment-guiding algorithm(s).