Active clinical trials for "Headache"

During labor and delivery, pregnant women may choose to receive pain relief called epidural analgesia, which is the delivery of a numbing agent through the back and into a body space around the spinal column. This numbs the area of the stomach and the pelvis. Typically the numbing agent is lidocaine, which is a local anesthetic like your dentist uses. Some times the numbing agent is combined with another medication that causes drowsiness and relieves pain called a narcotic. One of the risks associated with having this kind of pain relief is unintentional puncture of a sheath of tissue that surrounds and protects the spinal cord when inserting the needle. This sheath is called the dura. This would cause the fluid surrounding the spinal cord to leak out and this would cause a headache. This headache is called a post-dural puncture headache [PDPH]. The headache can be mild or severe. Rarely, PDPH can be serious and cause bleeding or small clots in the brain and damage to nerves that come out of the brain. The purpose of this study is to test the use of a technique that uses a hollow cotton swab [no needles] to numb a nerve cell cluster that sits at the very back of the nasal cavity. The anatomical name for this nerve cell cluster is the sphenopalatine ganglion. This has been done before at BJH and other hospitals with positive results, but no formal studies have been conducted here. Also, the sphenopalatine ganglion [SPG] has been the treatment target for other kinds of headaches. To numb the SPG, a hollow tip cotton swab [like a long Q-Tip] is inserted through the nose to the back of the nasal cavity and a solution of numbing agent is slowly pumped through the hollow Q-tip. This study will include a group that will receive a salt solution through the swab instead of a numbing agent. Subjects will be offered BJH standard care for their headache if they do not have relief from the study procedures. Standard care would be decided by their treating physician and may include oral pain medications and/or medications like ibuprofen [Motrin] or they could have a procedure called an epidural blood patch. This is performed by injecting a small amount of the patient's own blood into the areas of the spinal column where the original epidural anesthesia was injected in order to "patch" the leaks in the dura.

To determine if the intravenous administration of Metoclopramide and diphenhydramine in combination can effectively treat headaches in pregnant patients in those refractory to acetaminophen when compared to codeine

Pediatric chronic pain disorders are common and consequential in Western societies, occurring in 25-80% of population-based samples with a median prevalence of 11-38% and significant pain-related disability in 3-5% of these children. Pediatric chronic pain disorders have a negative impact on many aspects children's lives including mobility, night sleep, school attendance, peer relationships, family functioning, and overall quality of life. Parents caring for these children risk loss of parental earnings, and these disorders place a high financial burden on healthcare. In a nationally representative sample in the United States, costs related to health care were significantly higher ($1,339 per capita) for children with chronic pain disorders compared to children with common pediatric health conditions of ADHD, asthma and obesity. In children with clinical chronic pain conditions, such as daily headaches or fibromyalgia, chronic pain is presumably a persistent state of an overly excitable nervous system. This phenomenon known as central sensitization is characterized by excessive pain sensitivity that occurs in response to non-painful stimuli, such as light touch or contact with clothing, and slightly painful stimuli, such as a light pinprick. This hypersensitivity results from peculiar changes in the working of the central nervous system, including the spinal cord and brain, and leads to unusual intensification of pain that is out of proportion to the inciting stimulus. For example, light touch from clothing on the skin is perceived as intensely painful. Central sensitization is also thought to contribute to the spreading of pain to other body sites in several chronic pain disorders. In chronic pain disorders, the function of the central descending inhibitory modulating system is likely impaired and is traditionally measured by a phenomenon identified as "conditioned pain modulation (CPM)" and more recently measured by a phenomenon of "offset analgesia" (OA). The OA test is more robust than the CPM test and likely more acceptable to most patients, especially children, because it is shorter in duration and uses a more tolerable painful stimulus. Compared to CPM, the OA test is more tolerable because it is conducted using a painful test stimulus that is less than the maximal (suprathreshold). Additionally, the time of exposure to the painful stimulus is significantly shorter, a few seconds, in the OA test compared to CPM. The central descending inhibitory pathway that modulates pain as tested by OA is functional and mature in healthy children as young as 6 year of age, but it has yet to be investigated in children with chronic pain disorders. The investigators plan to test OA responses in a population of common pediatric pain disorders with overlapping symptomology attributed to central sensitization (such as chronic musculoskeletal pain, chronic abdominal pain and chronic headaches and chronic regional pain syndromes) and compare their responses with an age- and sex-matched control group. The characteristics of OA responses in each group will allow for assessment of the presence or absence of central sensitization as a mechanism driving the persistent, abnormal pain in a subgroup of these chronic pain disorders. The investigators hypothesize that central sensitization is the potential contributory mechanism of the central nervous system heightened sensitivity to two testing stimuli of painful (moderate heat discomfort sensation) and non-painful (warmth sensation) in children with chronic pain disorders. These types of sensations mimic those that children would be expected to experience their natural environment during typical activities of daily living such as showering/bathing in warm water or hand washing. Additionally, the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ) and Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI) will be used as clinical screening tools for subjective report of sensitization symptoms, and are simple and easy to administer in a clinical setting. The investigators hypothesize that these measures will correlate with the objective offset analgesia responses thus allowing for assessment of central sensitization in children with chronic pain disorders. These tests are advantageous because they are feasible to perform rapidly in a clinic setting and have utility for measurement of patient responses to therapeutic interventions. If this concept is supported by this study, future studies could utilize OA to examine the effects of various pharmacological and physical interventions used to manage children with chronic pain disorders including intensive interdisciplinary rehabilitation or specific interventions such as aerobic exercise, which likely modulates pain via similar mechanisms.

The objectives of this study are to investigate the effects of needle design, needle size and stylet reinsertion on the risk for headache after diagnostic LP (lumbar puncture, Post-LP headache). The following needles are used in the study: Sprotte 25 Gauge (G) (0.5 mm) atraumatic needle with introducer Sprotte 22 G (0.7 mm) atraumatic needle with introducer Spinocan 25 G (0.5 mm) cutting needle

A majority of patients would suffer from moderate-to-severe postoperative pain after undergoing craniotomy. As a result, adequate pain control is essential for patients' prognosis and their postoperative life quality. Although opioids administration is regarded as the first-line analgesic for post-craniotomy pain management, it may be associated with delayed awakening, respiratory depression, hypercarbia and it may interfere with the neurologic examination. For the avoidance of side-effects of systemic opioids, local anesthetics administered around the incision have been performed clinically. However, some studies revealed that the analgesic effect of local anesthetics was not unsatisfactory due to its short pain relief duration. As is reported that postoperative pain of craniotomy is mainly caused by skin incision and reflection of muscles, preventing the liberation of inflammatory mediators around the incision seems to be more effective than simply blocking nerve conduction. Thus, Investigators suppose that pre-emptive scalp infiltration with steroid (dexamethasone) plus local anesthetic (ropivacaine) could relieve postoperative pain after craniotomy in adults.

The purpose of this single-center, prospective, randomized, double-blind, sham controlled, parallel-group study is to collect clinical data related to the safety and efficacy of vagus nerve stimulation for the acute and preventive treatment of Post Traumatic Headache.

Comparison of efficacy and safety of amitriptyline and nerve blocks

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of triptans and doxycycline on neuroinflammatory markers in acute migraine.

To investigate headache score and accompanying symptoms during and after infusion of the natriuretic peptides.

The primary aim of the present trial is to study the effect of daily vitamin D supplementation on muscular power and force among non-western immigrants living in Oslo, Norway, and secondarily to study the effect of musculoskeletal pain and headache. The investigators have also prespecified a number of additional research questions about anemia, metabolism and bone turnover, inflammation, diabetes, lipids, itching and kidney function, which because of multiple comparisons should be interpreted with caution unless the statistical evidence for an effect is very strong.