Salman Khan was battling a court case and a neuro problem for years

Not just the court cases, there is one more problem actor Salman Khan has been fighting for years -- trigeminal neuralgia, a facial nerve disorder.

Not just the court cases, there is one more problem actor Salman Khan has been fighting for years -- trigeminal neuralgia, a facial nerve disorder. So when the judge held him guilty in the 2002 hit-and-run case on Wednesday, his advocate, Shrikant Shivade, requested the term be reduced, keeping his health issue in mind.

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In an interview to HT in 2011, Khan had said, “I am suffering from trigeminal neuralgia for the past seven years. It’s getting worse by the day.”

Elaborating on the medical condition, Dr PP Ashok, senior consulting neurologist, Hinduja Healthcare Surgical, Khar, said, “People suffering from trigeminal neuralgia experience excruciating pain on one side of the face that lasts for a few minutes. The condition is a result of an abnormality in a blood vessel in the brain.”

During the interview, Khan had also said he was undergoing treatment for the disorder. “I got an angiography done a month ago, but it was not for the heart — it was meant to detect the nerve [where the problem was]. The ailment leads to flexing of a nerve [on the face] and hoarseness in the voice,” Khan had said.

The condition has aggravated in Khan’s case because the abnormal blood vessel is pressing the nerve. “It is possible that he might have endured the pain for a long time,” said Dr Ashok, adding the arteriovenous malformation, which Khan suffers from, does not cause a lot of complications. “The only risk is a few blood vessels may bleed, which may irritate the brain, resulting in an epileptic fit. It mainly depends on the region where the nerve is located,” he said.