Facial Pain

Your face is a central sensory organ located on the front surface of the head. The face contains your eyes, eyebrows, forehead, nose, cheeks, mouth, teeth and chin. To facilitate expression and movement, the face comprises a large network of nerves that supply energy to these muscles and actions, as well as bones that hold its structure in place. Your senses, such as hearing, smell, taste and vision, are also channeled through the face. Facial pain may include injuries to the nerves or bones that coordinate many of your face’s actions. These injuries may include trauma to the face and upper maxillary bone (jaw bone) caused by a car accident, physical violence, or sports injury. Such injuries may cause a loss of sensation in the face, difficulties with breathing, swelling, blurred or double vision, facial deformities, and difficulties eating and drinking.

Sometimes facial pain is not trauma induced, but caused by a malfunctioning of the nerves that govern the face’s movement. The trigeminal nerve relays messages between your brain and sensory organs, providing information about face and scalp sensation (ophthalmic), the mouth and nose (maxillary), and chewing (mandibular). Trigeminal neuralgia is a condition manifesting with extreme facial pain that can feel like burning or an electric shock. The pain is severe enough that daily activities, such as chewing, eating, or teeth brushing, can be agonizing.

Other neurologic causes of facial pain include Bell’s palsy and Parkinson’s disease. Bell’s palsy produces numbness and paralysis on one side of the face. Facial symptoms from Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurologic condition, include facial tremors or twitches and a paralysis of the facial muscles that causes a rigid, mask-like appearance.