Most of the feeling in the top and back of your head is transmitted to the brain by the two greater occipital nerves – one on each side of your head. The two nerves emerge from between bones of the spine in your upper neck and make their way through muscles at the back of your head and into your scalp.
If one of these nerves anywhere along the way gets irritated, it can cause a shooting, zapping, electric, or tingling pain. Sometimes the pain can also feel like it’s “radiating” forward toward the eye on the same side. In some patients the scalp becomes very sensitive to the slightest touch, or even just lying on a pillow; or there may be numbness. The region where the nerves enter the scalp may be extremely tender. Or you may experience migraines or cluster headaches.
The good news is that, like many other nerves, the greater occipital nerves can be “blocked” – made numb with an injection of medication – to relieve pain.
An occipital nerve block is a safe, relatively simple procedure that we perform at New Jersey Pain Care Specialists – a 5 to 10-minute procedure that requires no preparation:
- After you lie face-down on the examination table, your physician locates the tender site on your scalp by feel and then cleans it with alcohol.
- Using a thin needle, a mixture of local anesthetic and steroids are injected into your scalp in the area of the “trunk” of the nerve.
- Your scalp on the injected side quickly goes numb, often relieving pain within minutes, and the physician asks how this numbness affects your symptoms.
- You can usually drive home and return to normal activities the following day.
The numbness wears off in a few hours, but the effects of the steroid begin to increase over the next several days to help bring your pain under control for sometimes weeks or months.
If these temporary nerve blocks provide good results, there are a variety of other more permanent pain-relieving procedures that can be performed by our doctors.
Note: If you are taking blood thinners or have an active infection, or you are allergic to the steroids or other medicines included in an occipital nerve block, you should not have this procedure.
