Abstract Details

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Abstract Details

Title The Application of Ultrasound in Diagnosis and Surveillance of Chronic Occipital Neuralgia

Topic Headache

Presentation(s) Headache Posters (7:00 AM-5:00 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 106

Objective

To evaluate the two following hypotheses:

1) Occipital nerve size is larger in patients with occipital neuralgia.

2) Occipital nerve size correlates to subjective pain severity in the setting of occipital neuralgia.

Background Our previously conducted literature review demonstrated a gap in current literature focusing on the use of ultrasound to directly visualize and measure the dimensions of occipital nerves in the setting of occipital neuralgia. We therefore decided to use ultrasound imaging as a conduit to obtaining occipital nerve measurements within this experiment and further expanded our research question to compare nerve size to subjective pain scale.

Design/Methods A quantitative analysis was done on the comparison of ultrasound guided measurements of occipital nerve between 9 patients diagnosed with occipital neuralgia and 13 asymptomatic controls.

Results An Independent Samples t-test showed significant difference between cross-sectional areas of greater and lesser occipital nerves. (p-value 0.003, 0.04). Majority of our patient group had severe pain and there was no significant difference for their pain score. Therefore, we did not evaluate for correlation between pain score and nerve size.

Conclusions Our study provided evidence for increased occipital nerve size in patients suffering from occipital neuralgia. This finding emphasizes the role of ultrasound as an important diagnostic and surveillance tool for this chronic neurologic condition. However, this study was unable to evaluate the correlation between occipital nerve size and subjective pain scale. Future studies utilizing expanded data of patients with mild and intermediate pain scale scores could evaluate for such correlation.

Authors/Disclosures
Elham Azizi, MD (Northshore University health system) PRESENTER	Dr. Azizi has nothing to disclose.
Kiana Moussavi, MD (Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center)	Dr. Moussavi has nothing to disclose.
	No disclosure on file
José H. Posas, MD, F�鶹��ýӳ�� (UVA Department of Neurology)	Dr. Posas has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Consultant for Pfizer. Dr. Posas has or had stock in Dane Health.Dr. Posas has or had stock in Brainscope.Dr. Posas has a non-compensated relationship as a Advisor with Dane Health that is relevant to �鶹��ýӳ�� interests or activities. Dr. Posas has a non-compensated relationship as a Lecturer with Concussion Corner Academy that is relevant to �鶹��ýӳ�� interests or activities. Dr. Posas has a non-compensated relationship as a Advisor with Brainscope that is relevant to �鶹��ýӳ�� interests or activities.