Patient Pain Sketches Can Predict Surgical Outcomes in Trigger-Site Deactivation Surgery for Headaches.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Patient selection for headache surgery is an important variable to ensure successful outcomes. In the authors' experience, a valuable method to visualize pain/trigger sites is to ask patients to draw their pain. The authors have found that there are pathognomonic pain patterns for each site, and typically do not operate on patients with atypical pain sketches, as they believe such patients are poor surgical candidates. However, a small subset of these atypical patients undergo surgery based on other strong clinical findings. In this study, the authors attempt to quantify this clinical experience.

Methods

Patients were prospectively enrolled and completed pain sketches at screening. One hundred six diagrams were analyzed/categorized by two independent, blinded revi

SUBMITTER: Gfrerer L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7505156 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature