Oklahoma Pain Treatment Centers: Occipital Nerve Block

Do you get daily headaches? Whether you suffer from tension headaches, migraines, or headaches on only one side, if you get them for four hours or longer (for at least half of the month or for more than three months), then you might suffer from chronic daily headaches. The relentless pain can be overwhelming, especially when over-the-counter medications aren’t offering much relief. It’s possible that your occipital nerves are the cause of the pain. For this type of pain, our Oklahoma Pain Treatment Centers therapists offer occipital nerve blocks.

Occipital nerve blocks are injections of a steroid and a local anesthetic, which serves to reduce swelling and inflammation of tissue around the occipital nerves. This helps the area around the greater and lesser occipital nerves that are located on the back of the head just above the neck area.

Not all pain management OKC patients will feel lasting relief from having an occipital nerve block. It is difficult to predict if the injection will help you or not, as, generally, patients who have had a recent onset of pain may respond much better than the ones with a longstanding pain. Usually, the first injection is as much a test run by Dr. Christensen as it is a treatment. The first block will confirm that the occipital nerves are involved in the pain and will be helpful. Otherwise, it will not help, and the occipital nerves will not be suspected as part of the pain.

With these odds, one may wonder whether they should even bother with treatment, but it’s a matter of living with pain or trying something that just may work for you. Think of how happy you’d feel knowing that you took a shot and it worked out. As the old saying by Wayne Gretzky goes, “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

If you have painful, chronic daily headaches and you feel like you’ve tried everything else, give an occipital nerve block a chance. Our Oklahoma Pain Treatment Centers therapists are available to provide this service upon appointment. Just give us a call to schedule your appointment at 405-751-0011 .