Malignant tumors of the paranasal sinuses are quite rare entity, with maxillary neoplasms accounting for less than 1 percent of all head and nck malignancies. When considering the paranasal sinuses alone, 77 percent of cancers arise in the
maxillary
sinuses.
There is no situation more frustrating than the management of the patients with chronic facial pain due to cancer.
The initial step in managing patients with cancer pain is the use of oncologic therapy in the form of radiotherapy, surgery, chemotherapy, alone or combined, either to effect a cure or decrease the size of the tumor and thus decrease or eliminate
the
pain.
When oncologic therapy is ineffective in providing relief, the pain must be treated by one or more of the followings: Systemic analgesics and adjuvant drugs, psychologic techniques of analgesia, neurostimulating techniques, neuroablative surgical
procedures, regional analgesia with local anesthetics or neurolytic blocks.
An 82-year old patient had severe pain of the orbital and infraorbital region due to squamous cell carcinoma of the maxillary sinus.
We successfully treated this patient with the percutaneous retrogasserian ethanol gangliolysis by a H?tel approach, and the analgesia lasts until the death of the patient.
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