Effekten av manuellterapeutisk behandling på cervikogen huvudvärk

Background: Ninety percent of the western population suffer at some point in the life of a headache. This results in substantial costs to society of sick leave and health expenditure and personal losses in the form of pain and dysfunction of privacy. Cervicogenic headache (CGH) is a headache referred from structures in the upper cervical spine and have a prevalence of 0,4 -2,5 %. Purpose/objective: To study the effect of manual therapy (traction, articulation ad modum Kaltenborn and soft-tissue therapy and cervical manipulation) in pain intensity (NRS), duration of the headache (number of hours / day) registered with a headache diary and function measured with HIT-6 in patients with longstanding CGH. Design: Single-subject experimental design (SSED) Material and method: Two patients satisfied the inclusion criteria and were included in the study which lasted for forty-two days. The intervention period lasted for day eight to thirty five. The patients received two manual therapeutic treatments each week for four weeks. Results: Both patients received clinically meaningful changes in its function as measured by the HIT-6. One patient also had clinically meaningful change in pain intensity as measured in NRS. No effect was seen on the duration of the headache. Conclusion: Manual Therapeutic treatment affected these two patients' daily functioning in a positive direction. One patient experienced reduced pain intensity. Prolonged analgesic use in combination with psychosocial factors is important to take into consideration at the start of manual therapeutic treatment and studies