Conditions: Migraine
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 45
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Subjects are scheduled to undergo a Greater Occipital Nerve Block (GONB) as treatment for your chronic daily headache (CDH). GONB has been used for many years in the treatment of headaches. The nerve block is done by injecting a liquid drug through the skin of the back of the head to the area of the greater occipital nerve. The nerve runs superficially in this area, therefore the drugs are injected just under the skin. The injected drugs block electrical transmission through the nerve, resulting in reduced head pain. There are treatment options for patients receiving a GONB, however, some clinicians use local anesthetics (lidocaine and /or bupivicaine) alone, and some use local anesthetics with local steroid injection. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether or not there is an observed difference between these two treatment approaches for GONB. We expect to enroll 60 patients into this research study at Thomas Jefferson University only.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Adult patients with CDH, and headache of at least moderate intensity at time of treatment, were randomized to receive bilateral GONB and trigger point injections in the cervical paraspinal and the trapezius muscles bilaterally. arm 2: Adult patients with CDH, and headache of at least moderate intensity at time of treatment, were randomized to receive bilateral GONB and trigger point injections in the cervical paraspinal and the trapezius muscles bilaterally.

Interventions: intervention 1: lidocaine, bupivicaine and saline intervention 2: lidocaine plus bupivicaine plus triamcinolone (steroid)
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: lidocaine, bupivicaine and saline-2 cc were injected to each GON and 0.5 cc to each trigger point. Total injected volume = 10 cc. intervention 2: lidocaine, bupivicaine and triamcinolone (steroid)-2 cc were injected to each GON and 0.5 cc to each trigger point. Total injected volume = 10 cc.

Protocol document: