Occipital nerve electrical stimulation via the midline approach and subcutaneous surgical leads for treatment of severe occipital neuralgia: a pilot study.

Persistent occipital neuralgia can produce severe headaches that may not be controllable by conservative or surgical approaches. We describe a case series of 6 patients who had chronic headaches over an average of 4.9 yr who underwent occipital nerve electrical stimulation lead implantation using a modified midline approach. The patients had received conservative and surgical therapies in the past including oral antidepressants, membrane stabilizers, opioids, occipital nerve blocks, and radiofrequency ablations. Significant decreases in pain visual analog scale (VAS) scores and drastic improvement in functional capacity were observed during the occipital stimulation trial and during the 3-mo follow-up after implantation. The mean VAS score changed from 8.66 +/- 1.0 to 2.5 +/- 1.3 whereas pain disability index improved from 49.8 +/- 15.9 to 14.0 +/- 7.4. Our midline approach has several advantages compared with the submastoid approach used elsewhere. There is only one small midline incision over the upper neck and the strain on the lead extension occurs only with flexion and is minimal with lateral flexion and rotation, which contributes to overall stability of this system.