Occipital Nerve Block for Headaches

The American Academy of Neurology has reported that treating migraine headaches with occipital nerve block is effective. Occipital nerve block is a procedure where anesthetic agents are injected near the occipital nerve on the back of the head near the base of the skull on the side of the migraine headache.

Within five minutes after the nerve block, 60% of patients had mild or no headache and 75% of patients had mild or no light sensitivity. Over half of the patients had no side effects. About 20% had pain at the injection site and about 20% experienced dizziness. The investigators of the study concluded that greater occipital nerve blocks are safe and easy procedures that can be performed in the office.

The average duration of benefit in these trials was about four days. About 20% of responders still had total migraine headache relief one week after the injection.

Both of these trials were performed at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Headache Center in Philadelphia. With the small number of patients in both of these trials, it is difficult to know if these results would be noticed in a larger population. If an individual has true occipital neuralgia due to pinching or entrapment of the occipital nerve, then occipital nerve block may be of long-term benefit.

If a medication is developed that could be injected in the occipital nerve region to provide a long-term reduction in the patient’s migraine frequency, then this treatment would likely become standard of care. I hope that something like this will be developed sometime in the near future.

Results have also shown promising for using occipital nerve blocks in patients with new daily persistent headache. This is something I may consider at some point in the future. However, I think that only a nerve block should be considered after many medications have been tried and other lifestyle changes.

For the full article visit http://www.healthcentral.com/migraine/c/48/2831/nerve-block-migraine/