Your Treatment Options for Headaches

The prevalence of headaches in the United States is eye-opening — migraines alone affect one in four households, to say nothing of tension headaches, cluster headaches, and post-traumatic headaches. In fact, there are more than 150 different types of primary and secondary headaches and most people experience at least one during their lives.

At Summit Pain Alliance, our experienced team of pain management specialists recognizes how debilitating head pain can be, which is why we offer a wide range of headache treatment options.

If you’re suffering from ongoing problems with headaches, here’s a look at how we can help relieve the pain.

Trigger point injections

Trigger points are areas where your muscles are inflamed or irritated, which includes those in your head, neck, and shoulders. To release the tension, we typically inject a local anesthetic and steroid into the “knot,” which usually provides near-immediate relief. We most often use trigger point injections to address migraines, tension headaches, or post-traumatic headaches.

Occipital nerve block

Your occipital nerve regulates the sensation in the back and top of your head, which means it plays a fairly large role in head pain. If we determine that your head pain involves your occipital nerve, we block the nerve from sending pain signals with an injection that contains an analgesic and steroid combination.

Dorsal root ganglion stimulation

This treatment is a neuromodulation technique in which we deliver electrical impulses into your dorsal root ganglion, a group of cells located in the dorsal root of your spinal nerve.

Stellate ganglion block

With this approach, we inject an anesthetic and steroid solution into your stellate ganglion, which are nerves located on either side of your larynx, to relieve certain types of head pain.

Trigeminal nerve blocks

The trigeminal nerve is often associated with headaches so we turn to a trigeminal nerve block to relieve many headache disorders. As with the other blocks, we use both an anesthetic and a steroid to interrupt the pain signaling.

Sphenopalatine ganglion block

The cluster of cells that make up your sphenopalatine ganglion is associated with your trigeminal nerve. In some cases, we perform the block in this specific area to relieve head pain.

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy

The platelets in your blood contain powerful growth factors that aid in healing and repair. With PRP therapy, we harvest your platelets, create a concentrate, and re-inject it into areas that can use a healing boost. With PRP, we target the nerves that are responsible for your head pain to help reduce the inflammation.

Finding your headache treatment

As you can see, we certainly don’t lack for treatment options when it comes to headaches. When you come in for your appointment, we spend some time reviewing your symptoms and your medical history to determine the best approach for your headache disorder.

If you’d like to put an end to your headaches, please contact one of our two locations in Petaluma or Santa Rosa, California, to set up a consultation.