Since neuropathy has such a wide range of symptoms and causes, it can be treated in a vast range of different ways. These treatments range from very simple and cheap drugs such as amitryptyline (commonly used for treating depression), to opioid drugs for more serious cases of pain.
Since peripheral neuropathy has a large range of areas it can affect, treatment tends to vary greatly. If a patient has carpal tunnel syndrome, a type of mononeuropathy, for example, treatment can involve very simple stretching exercises, splints to provide support, corticosteroid injections, or even surgical intervention in the most serious cases.
If, as an example of polyneuropathy, the patient is having difficulty urinating or controlling urination, then treatments start off with simple exercises and in some cases medications to help try to bring the control back to the sufferer. Protective pads can also be used to absorb any unwanted urine. If the problem becomes more severe, or the medication doesn’t seem to control it, then surgery may be needed to provide eventual relief to the patient.
In diabetic peripheral neuropathy, the method of ‘Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation’ (TENS) has been proven in trials to be very effective. Many patients report their symptoms as having disappeared after only one session of this, though symptoms do tend to return back to how they began within a month or so of the TENS treatment.
As a whole, many types of peripheral neuropathy are treatable using drugs of various strengths. Antidepressants can provide effective relief in some cases for very low cost, often making them a preferred choice. Cannabis and opioids can also provide pain relief, with opioids tending to be more effective than cannabis when taken orally.
For sufferers of optic neuropathy, there are many simple and easy ways to help stop vision from further deteriorating. Nutrients such as zeaxanthin, lutein and vinpocetine are good, and many fish oils also have a reported positive effect on how symptoms progress.
No full cure is known for optic neuropathy; the main problem is that once nerve fibres in the optic nerve are destroyed, they simply do not have the ability to heal themselves or grow back. The best hope for optic neuropathy is an early diagnosis, as this can lead to the cause being found quickly, preventing further damage in the future.
Auditory neuropathy can be somewhat harder to detect than optic neuropathy. Also, in some cases, the associated hearing loss is sudden, giving no warning for the patient to react to before losing his or her hearing. In the case of partial hearing loss, there are however a couple of possible methods of medical support:
Hearing aids can be useful sometimes, though many people with auditory neuropathy find these to be ineffective at best, sometimes reporting no improvement whatsoever. Another method is for the patient to receive a cochlear implant. This is an electronic device implanted into one or both cochleas of a sufferer. However, this too, despite being a modern and expensive technique, unfortunately only has limited success with treating auditory neuropathy.