Post-Stroke or Brain Injury

Fine, British Medical Journal (1967),²⁴⁹⁶ reported five patients with post-stroke hemiplegia and pain in part or all off the affected side of the  body. Three of the patients received a combination of PHT alone. All responded dramatically with complete resolution of pain.

2496. Fine, W., Post-hemiplegic epilepsy in the elderly, Br. Med. J., 199-201, 1967.

Cantor, British Medical Journal (1972),⁸⁸³ reports two patients with thalamic pain who experienced gook relief with PHT. The author states that  the treatment of the painful, burning dysesthesias which can occur after thalamic infarction has been a particularly wising problem, in that a variety of drugs have been tried with variable but generally ineffective results. The author reports that in each of the cases, when PHT treatment was stopped, the painful dysesthesia recurred. Reinstitution of PHT again resulted in alleviation of the pain.

883. Cantor, F. K., Phenytoin treatment of thalamic pain. Brit. Med. J., 4: 590-591, 1972.

Mladinich, JAMA (1974), ¹³⁶⁹ reported successful use of PHT for relief of facial pain associated with Wallenberg syndrome. A forty-year-old man was afflicted with ipsilateral burning facial pain around the eye.  Ordinary analgesics did not relieve this pain.  PHT, 1000mg in divided doses the first day and the n 300 mg daily, was tried. Symptoms of facial pain were considerably relieved within several days.

1369. Mladinich, E. K., Diphenylhydantoin in the Wallenberg syndrome, JAMA, 230: 372-373, 1974.

Agnew and Goldberg, Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Societies (1976), ¹⁷¹⁵ tried PHT in a group of ten patients with chronic, severe, intractable thalamic pain, unresponsive to previous treatment. Three patients were markedly improved and two were slightly improved.

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