Role of neurostimulation in migraine

Abstract

Chronic forms of headache characterized by daily or almost daily headache, affect almost 3 % of general population. They represent the most disabling forms of headache inducing high degree of disability, poor quality of life for patients. During the last decades, several neuromodulatory surgical techniques have been developed for the management of headaches that are unresponsive to medical treatment. Invasive and non invasive central and/or peripheral neurostimulation techniques have been developed by different research groups with encouraging results for different type of headaches. In this report, the acute effect of non invasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS) (gammacore) was evaluated to treat migraine attacks in a population of patients affected by high-frequency episodic migraine or chronic migraine. The aim of this study was to verify the efficacy of nVNS to treat migraine attacks in this specific category of patients.