Whilst searching about TN for a blog article for my main journal, which is total rantage about someone and their pity party way of dealing with something a lot less effed up as TN, when I found something rather nifty an article about an 18 point yes or no questionnaire which would diagnose multiple types of Facial Pain.
Taken are some excerpts from the article found at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/41224.php
[Speaking of TN] ... People with the condition "are begging to be killed," said Kim Burchiel, M.D., professor and chairman of neurological surgery at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine who sees several new TN cases a week. "I'm telling you, it's total agony.
"But there is hope. Burchiel has pioneered a new method for classifying and diagnosing TN, and much of the diagnosis can be done by patients themselves. Burchiel's team has developed the world's first online, artificial neural network to be used as a diagnostic tool for facial pain syndromes. It's an artificial intelligence-based computer program built around a classification scheme that categorizes forms of the disorder, and it can be trained to recognize patterns in facial pain data and continually improve its accuracy in predicting the correct diagnosis.
"It's software designed to work the way the brain does," Burchiel said."
"Burchiel doesn't think patients should have to wait until a clinic visit to get a diagnosis, so he developed the artificial neural network, which patients can easily, and confidentially, access on the OHSU Department of Neurological Surgery's Web site. Burchiel and neurosurgery department colleagues Farhad Limonadi, M.D., and Shirley McCartney, Ph.D., recently tested the network by asking 100 patients with facial pain to respond to the questionnaire during their first visits. They then interviewed each patient and made an independent diagnosis. Patients' responses and their diagnoses were input to the network, and a genetic algorithm was used to train the program.
The network correctly diagnosed most of the patients. It also correctly diagnosed trigeminal neuralgia Type 1 with 84 percent sensitivity and 83 percent specificity among another 43 new patients who used the network before their clinic diagnosis. Sensitivity is a measure of a diagnostic tool's ability to make a correct diagnosis, and specificity describes its ability to avoid a misdiagnosis."
Considering it's accuracy (spoken of as sensitivity) it is definitely something to consider using. It obviously does not replace a physician and no one is suggesting that it does. However, what it can be used for is being able to spark a conversation between physician and patient and hopefully avoid unnecessary treatments - which could be detrimental.
The questionnaire itself can be found at https://neurosurgery.ohsu.edu/tgn.php and the article that sparked this "article" or discussion piece and which has been quoted can be found at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/41224.php and was written by Jonathan Modie 09/04/06