Intralesional steroid injection after nerve block anesthesia in the treatment of orofacial granulomatosis.

BACKGROUND

The facial disfigurement produced by orofacial granulomatosis causes enormous embarrassment. None of the many therapies recommended is reliably successful. Oral corticosteroids cause significant side effects and repeated injections of small quantities of triamcinolone are painful. We have injected large volumes of triamcinolone after numbing the lips using nerve block anesthesia.

OBSERVATIONS: Nine patients (six males and three females, aged 10 to 47 years) with orofacial granulomatosis were investigated. No evidence of an allergic cause was found using patch or contact urticaria tests. Eating chocolate produced lip swelling in one man, and his lip shrank in size after avoiding this for 12 months. Five patients, aged 10 to 24 years, were treated with high-volume intralesional triamcinolone injections (3 to 10 mL of 10 mg/mL) after first numbing the lips using infraorbital nerve branch and mental nerve block. After 6 weeks, the lip size returned to normal in four patients and was reduced in a fifth. One patient was injected on four occasions over a 2-year period; in four other patients treated once, lip size remained reduced for over 10 months.

CONCLUSION

Intralesional triamcinolone reduces lip swelling in patients with orofacial granulomatosis. Numbing the lips by nerve block anesthesia before triamcinolone injection enables adequate volumes and repeated injections to be given painlessly.