Hemiplegic Migraine and Paraspinous Cervical Injections with Bupivacaine

​I recently treated a patient with hemiplegic migraines successfully with bupivacaine cervical injections, a novel therapeutic technique using paraspinous cervical injections. The technique employs deep intramuscular injections of 1.5 mL of 0.5% bupivacaine bilaterally into the paraspinous muscles of the lower neck. (Read more in my October 2012 blog and see it demonstrated in a video at http://bit.ly/2ewC5n1.)This headache and orofacial pain treatment was first described in 1996 by my twin brother, Gary Mellick, DO, a neurologist who did a pain fellowship. The exact mechanism is unknown, but the treatment appears to work centrally on the brain based on convincing observations. Evidence of central effects include resolution of cortical-related signs and symptoms such as nausea, photophobia, and allodynia. The first three cervical nerves that innervated the neck and scalp travel directly into the brain stem and the trigeminal caudate nucleus, a relay center important to other successful headache medications. This relay center in the brain stem also has synapses with cranial nerves 5, 7, 9, and 10 and antinociceptive centers such as the periaqueductal gray, nucleus raphe magnus, and the rostroventral medulla synapse, which have a profound antinociceptive effect. Neural connections to the cerebral cortex are also documented.Until now, no actual physical evidence has documented central activity other than patient-reported relief of headache and nausea, photophobia, phonopho...
Source: M2E Too! Mellick's Multimedia EduBlog - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs