The paper was authored by Dr Elliot Shevel, Chairman of the South African branch of the I.H.S. and ethical approval was obtained from the S.A.M.A research ethics committee. Shevel has published widely and is a peer reviewer for Headache and other journals.
The procedure entails the cauterization of the internal maxillary artery (MA), and for the purposes of the study was performed on one chronic and four episodic cluster headache sufferers.
According to the study “The pain in Cluster Headache is … most often is localized to the region supplied by the maxillary artery (MA), namely the peri- orbital, retro-orbital, and orofacial areas”.
Shevel’s paper concludes “In the treatment of CH, the possibility must always be borne in mind that the cluster stopped spontaneously, not because of the intervention, but because of the natural progression of the disease. This could not have been the case with patient 1 who had chronic CH. Also, the fact that the attacks stopped immediately after the surgery in 4 of 5 cases makes it statistically highly unlikely that all 4 happened to obtain spontaneous relief directly after surgery.
What is also significant is that patient 4 had an attack that started during the surgery. Without prompting and without being aware of what stage the surgery had reached, he reported that the pain ceased at the moment the MA was clamped and cauterized.”
The full scientific text of the published article can be found at this address https://www.headacheclinic.co.za/uploads/ftp/CH.pdf
This video’s link was supplied by the chronic cluster headache sufferer referred to in the study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEw-44-dPQk&feature=youtu.be
A Cluster Headache sufferer whom also supplied his own video, click to view https://youtu.be/FnIxSrFeB7M “Institutions, organizations, and medical professionals are encouraged to throw off old ideas that have not brought pain relief to desperate people, and embrace new modalities that are ending pain and restoring lives”
