Treating cluster headaches with oxygen therapy 'is effective'
Just 15 minutes of high-flow oxygen therapy can relieve the pain of cluster headaches, new research has found.
According to a study at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, sufferers who used oxygen therapy reported a substantial reduction in the levels of pain they were experiencing.
More than three quarters of the patients said they were pain-free within 15 minutes, compared to 20 per cent of those who only received air.
The authors wrote that this study shows that oxygen therapy can be considered a sound method to treat cluster headaches of varying severity.
"To our knowledge, this is the first adequately-powered trial of high-flow oxygen compared with placebo and it confirms clinical experience and current guidelines that inhaled oxygen can be used as an acute attack therapy for episodic and chronic cluster headache," they added.
Medical News Today recently reported that oxygen therapy can bring significant relief for sufferers of cluster headaches.
Posted by Daniel Ohio
09/12/2009 16:26:23
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