People hospitalized for a debilitating migraine should receive targeted nerve blocks rather than IV opioids to quell their pain, a major update of treatment guidelines suggests.
Doctors should use a nerve block injection to stop pain signals from thrumming through the occipital nerves located near the top of the spine, a report published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, said.
"The occipital nerves at the base of the skull bring in pain signals to the same area of the brain where pain signals from all over the head are coming in," senior researcher Dr. Serena Orr, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Calgary, said in a news release.
Anesthetizing these nerves provides relief in two ways.
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