It takes about 30 minutes to electrically stimulate the brain to get rid of facial pain, but it can provide life-long relief for sufferers.

More information is available in the following Healthcast report by WTAE medical editor Marilyn Brooks, which first aired July 2, 2003, on Action News at 5 p.m.

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Neuromodulation is used to still the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. Now, neurosurgeons have found it can also block pain signals.

Kathy Hoenstine enjoys decorative painting, but she wasn't able to do it for three years.

Hoenstine: "I couldn't paint because of my eye. It was difficult to see."

Her vision wasn't bad. She had such severe facial pain that she couldn't get out of bed.

Hoenstine: "The pain was a horrible burning, almost as though there was a hot poker in my cheek."

She saw several doctors and had two unnecessary sinus surgeries before she learned that something had damaged her fifth cranial nerve. The damage had stopped, but her brain never got the message.

Dr. Kenneth Casey, neurosurgeon: "The brain thinks, "I'm not getting any information so I'll go back to the last good signals I had. Those were pain signals. I'll just run chronically.'"

Without a way to turn off the pain, Hoenstine could have been driven to madness -- or worse. But a neurostimulator saved the day.

The stimulator's electrodes are placed on the surface of the brain, somewhere in the area above the ear. A small computer can then use 340 variables, at the very minimum, to control or block pain.

On April 24, Casey inserted the electrode through a small hole in Hoenstine's skull and placed it on the surface of her brain near the fifth cranial nerve. A lead runs down her neck to the tiny computer under the skin near her collarbone.

Casey: "If there's a key to all of this -- whether it's pain deep in the brain or tremor -- it's figuring out what rate are the cells firing at and how can I best get their attention."

Hoenstine can get their attention with 2.5 amps. All she has to do is flick a switch.

Hoenstine: "I'm getting 100 percent relief, which is truly a miracle."

Stimulators have been used for 25 years, but this is the first time they are being used on the surface of the brain. It means there is pain relief without the risk of infection or bleeding, or unnecessary risk for the 40,000 new cases of trigeminal neuralgia or facial pain that are diagnosed every year.