• Linda Kollenburg, Erkan Kurt, Wim Mulleners, Alaa Abd-Elsayed, Cyrus Yazdi, Michael E Schatman, R Jason Yong, Ivo H Cerda, Adlai Pappy, Sait Ashina, Christopher Louis Robinson, and Moises Dominguez.
• Department of Neurosurgery, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
• Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2024 Oct 1; 28 (10): 101510341015-1034.

Purpose Of ReviewChronic headaches are a significant source of disability worldwide. Despite the development of conventional strategies, a subset of patients remain refractory and/or experience side effects following these treatments. Hence, occipital nerve stimulation (ONS) should be considered as an alternative strategy for intractable chronic headaches. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the effectiveness, safety, mechanisms and practical application of ONS for the treatment of headache disorders.Recent FindingsOverall response rate of ONS is 35.7-100%, 17-100%, and 63-100% in patients with cluster headache, chronic migraine and occipital neuralgia respectively. Regarding the long-term effectivity in all groups, 41.6-88.0% of patients remain responders after ≥ 18.3 months. The most frequently reported adverse events include lead migration/fracture (13%) and local pain (7.3%). Based on our results, ONS can be considered a safe and effective treatment for chronic intractable headache disorders. To support more widespread application of ONS, additional research with larger sample sizes should be conducted.© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

12 keywords...

hide…