Treating the pains in your head

Headaches have a variety of causes, but the most common types of headaches are migraine and muscle-tension type headaches. Though the great majority of headaches can be troublesome to you, they are rarely caused by dangerous problems.

More than 70% of Americans will suffer headache pain severe enough to seek medical attention at some point during their lifetimes and of them, 28 million suffer from migraines. A small, but substantial, minority of patients experience chronic daily or near daily headaches, which significantly impacts the quality of their lives and the lives of their families. At Raleigh Neurology Associates, our intent is to alleviate the pain in these patients as well as those patients with more episodic, but equally disruptive headaches, restoring a sense of well-being and returning you to acceptable functional status.

As a multi-specialty neurological center, RNA's highly skilled neurological team exams you thoroughly to determine what triggers your type of headache. We'll ask you to keep a Headache Diary (see sidebar to download a PDF of the diary) to help us track a pattern (if possible) and note the causes of your pain. Our patients suffer from all different types of headache pain, including migraines with and without auras, tension type headaches, and cluster headaches.  We are relentless in our pursuit of treatment regimens to help them all.

The FDA has recently approved the use of Botox® to treat chronic migraines. The injection is believed to block pain signals and relax the muscles in the face, allowing for less tension that may lead to migraine onset. The treatment is administered along the forehead, temporal regions, back of head, and down the sides of the neck every 12 weeks. Botox® has proven to be effective in patients with severe chronic migraines (occurring 15 or more times a month) who have not received relief from any other forms of medication. However, anyone with neuromuscular problems (especially muscle weakness), including Lambert-Eaton Syndrome and ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease, should avoid this treatment. Several of our physicians offer this treatment, including Dr. Ferrell, Dr. Bertics, Dr. Gabr, and Dr. Konanc.

Headache Pain Research

As well as our dedication to treating our headache pain patients, Raleigh Neurology is also deeply involved in headache pain research and conducts numerous ongoing clinical research studies.  Many of these studies have aided in some dramatic breakthroughs over the past years.  If you experience the required symptoms for a study, you might be asked to participate in one.

For more information about our research or to view current studies, please visit our RNA Research area.