Migraines: blockade of pain through the nose

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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MunichFor some migraine sufferers, the common drugs do not work sufficiently. A new procedure could help you. The anesthetic lidocaine is passed through the nose directly to a crucial nerve node. The treatment reduces the severity of the attacks over weeks.

Excruciating headaches, nausea, visual disturbances - a migraine can knock those affected out completely. For most of them, the pain attacks can be kept in check with tablets - but they don't work well enough for everyone.

Anesthesia by nasogastric tube

US doctors have now developed a new approach to get the pain under control: The team led by Kenneth Mandato from the Albany Medical Center directs the narcotic and pain reliever lidocaine through a spaghetti-thick tube to the root of the nose. Behind the mucous membrane there is a nerve knot, the pterygopalatine ganglion. It has been linked to migraine attacks. The treatment here, applying the painkiller locally, is so unproblematic that it can be done without anesthesia.

Halved pain

The researchers treated a total of 112 headache patients with the method. The subjects suffered from severe migraine or cluster headache attacks for at least 15 days a month. People with cluster headaches experience excruciating pain attacks that dig into one side of the brain like a glowing nail.

Thanks to the treatment, the participants' average pain scores halved on a scale from 0 to 10 from 8.5 to 4.2 points. Eighty-eight percent of the participants stated that they managed to get by without or with significantly less additional medication in the following four weeks.

"The method has the potential to break the migraine cycle," says study director Mandato. "Even if the original effect of lidocaine wears off, the migraine triggers seem to have little effect."

Repeat if necessary

Mandato, however, states that the therapy cannot completely cure the disease. Like other therapies for chronic headaches, their effect is limited in time. Since the procedure is minimally invasive and very safe, it can be repeated if necessary.

It had previously been possible to treat migraines by numbing the pterygopalatine ganglion. However, up to now this has been done with the help of injections - a significantly riskier and stressful procedure for the patient.

Widespread suffering

Around eight million people in Germany suffer from migraines. Researchers estimate that twelve to 14 percent of all women and about eight percent of all men suffer from migraines. Children can also have pain attacks. Five out of 100 children experience migraines before puberty.

Cluster headaches are about 50 times less common than migraines. Experts estimate that around 160,000 people in this country suffer from them. The attacks are usually much shorter but are usually much more violent than migraine attacks. Those affected often refer to it as the pain of annihilation. (cf)

Source: Society of Interventional Radiology press release, March 1, 2015

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