European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

ELECTROMYOGRAPHIC AND TEMPERATURE BIOFEEDBACK AMONG PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC TENSION AND MIGRAIN HEADACHES WHO FAILED STANDARD TREATMENT

Ghazala Nathu*, Adila Nathu and Saahil Patel

ABSTRACT

Our hypothesis was that utilizing biofeedback along with analgesics for treating uncontrolled chronic Tension and Migraine headaches (Tension Type headaches and Migraines) among patients who failed standard treatment would reduce use of analgesic medication along with the intensity, frequency, and the duration of pain of the headaches as compared to similar patients also failed to be controlled by standard treatment but continued to receive standard therapy consisting of analgesic medication only. This study was completed for the key fact that very few of the studies[1] worked with well diagnosed patients and[2] few worked with patients who had clearly failed other therapies which were shown to have been properly applied. In other words, our study was aimed at showing that biofeedback works with patients meeting set criteria for Migraine and Tension type headaches who failed properly provided standard treatments. Twenty-five patients were randomly selected from the pool of patients in our clinic who failed standard analgesic therapy for Tension type and Migraine headaches. Each was offered the opportunity to receive biofeedback therapy for their headaches along with their medical treatment as part of their regular clinical care. Their information was compared with headache activity of twenty-five similar patients who continued to receive standard medicinal care. Each of the people offered biofeedback and those who would serve as a comparison was provided with a HIPAA and explanation form in which each agreed to the use of their medical data related to headache activity. Each patient receiving biofeedback was given EMG biofeedback for 30 minutes and thermal biofeedback for 10 minutes during each of 10 weekly sessions. Patients in the comparison (treatment as usual) group received their medication as usual but did not receive any placebo biofeedback as this was simply a comparison group rather than a true ―control‖ group. People treated for headaches in our clinic kept 10 week long logs of headache activity and medication as part of normal tracking of headache activity so these data were available to use when comparing people receiving biofeedback in addition to standard care with those simply continuing standard care.

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