This bibliometric analysis aims to identify and evaluate the top 200 most influential articles on the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia (TN), encompassing both pharmacological and surgical interventions. The study seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of research trends, international collaborations, and citation metrics to inform future research and clinical practice.

A systematic search was conducted in November 2024 using the Web of Science (WoS) database, focusing on articles related to TN treatment. Articles were filtered by language (English) and type (original articles and reviews), excluding letters, errata, and conference abstracts. The top 200 most-cited articles were selected and analyzed using the Bibliometrix R package and biblioshiny web application. Data on authorship, institutions, countries, journals, keywords, and citations were extracted and analyzed.

The 200 articles, published between 1953 and 2021, were cited a total of 23,059 times, with an average of 115.3 citations per article. The majority (73%) were published in the 21st century, with the most productive year being 2002. Surgical management was the focus of 56.5% of the articles, with microvascular decompression (MVD) being the most studied surgical technique (25.5%). Pharmacological management was addressed in 18% of the articles. The United States contributed the most articles (39%), followed by the United Kingdom (12.5%) and Italy (5.5%). The most prolific journals were the Journal of Neurosurgery (21.5%) and Neurosurgery (19.5%). Key trends included a shift toward prospective studies and a decline in radiosurgery-focused research in the last decade.

This analysis highlights the dominance of surgical approaches, particularly MVD, in TN research, with a significant underrepresentation of pharmacological and minimally invasive treatments. The findings underscore the need for more international collaborations, particularly with low- and middle-income countries, and a greater focus on comparative effectiveness research, pharmacological studies, and basic science to address existing gaps in TN management.

S.J.W.: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, resources, software, validation, visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing; T.K.: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, resources, software, validation, visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing; A.K.D.: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing.

‡These authors share first authorship.

Received: 16 May 2025

Accepted: 30 January 2026

Accepted Manuscript online:
02 February 2026

Article published online:
13 July 2026

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