A Review of Deep Brain Stimulation Effect on Cluster Headaches

Background: cluster headache affects patients’ quality of life significantly. this conditionbeing characterized as a primary headache disorder which affects up 124 in 100,000individuals during their lifetime while there are current therapeutic modalities for clusterheadaches, recent advances showed the beneficial role of deep brain stimulation intreatment of chronic refractory cluster headaches.methods: this was a narriative review of literature.results: deep brain stimulation procedure has been used for various neurological conditionsuch as parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and dystonia. this procedure is being donewhile patients is being awake with the help of stereotactic localizing system. after penetratingthe skull, lead extension and pulse generator are implanted with the help of magneticresonance imaging and programmed using a transdermal implant deep brain stimulation ofhypothalamus and midbrain area could be the possible solution for chronic refractory clusterheadache patients to relief and improve their quality of lives. deep brain stimulation couldprovide relief for patients suffering from chronic refractory cluster headaches.conclusion: by using the targeted neuromodulation of a network around hypothalamic andmidbrain neural substrates, deep brain stimulation is able to generate short- and long-termpain-relief in a large majority of patients. with minimum side effects being reported until now,deep brain stimulation could be applied in selected cases.