Headache is a chronic disease that causes headache to patients and headache to doctors. It causes physical and mental torture to patients for years or even decades, which makes many patients suffer from pain. Its recurring attacks also leave many doctors at their wits’ end, and they can only passively provide pain relief to patients. Now, these patients with intractable headache who used to live on a large number of oral painkillers every day, who used to go to many large hospitals in Henan and even Beijing because of headache, who used to exhaust all kinds of treatment methods but to no avail, who used to be ready to end their lives because of headache, are treated in the Sixth Ward of Neurology Department (Cerebrovascular Headache and Epilepsy Ward) of Zhengzhou People’s Hospital by the expert team led by Dr. Yuan Xueqian, Vice President of Zhengzhou People’s Hospital. Under the treatment of the expert team led by Dr. Yuan Xueqian, Vice President of Zhengzhou People’s Hospital, they have been well controlled and lead a normal life. These patients often say: “I wish I had come here earlier, how many detours could have been taken and how much less suffering could have been done.” Yuan Xueqian, Brain Hospital, Zhengzhou People’s Hospital
Headache patients: different lengths of illness, same painful experience
When I came to the six wards of the Department of Neurology of Zhengzhou People’s Hospital, several headache patients gathered for a while when they heard that the reporter came to interview them, and they talked about their painful experiences and treatment effects.
”My headache has been tormenting me for more than 20 years”, “I’ve had it for more than 30 years”, “I’ve had it for 7 or 8 years”, they all talked about their own conditions. The causes of the disease are different, but all of them are difficult to heal after getting the disease, making the patients suffer for years or even decades, and each patient’s experience is a painful experience and memory.
”When I was a teenager, one day I suddenly felt pain in the area between the two eyebrows, like someone plucking with a knife, I threw up.” Ms. Shen, who is in her 40s, said that since that day, every year or two, she would have an attack of headache, and each time the pain was so unbearable that she had to rely on painkillers to get relief. By 2007, her headaches had worsened and the number of attacks had become more frequent. “Not only did it hurt between the two eyebrows, but the whole top of her head hurt, and she couldn’t sleep at all.” She had to go to several hospitals for inpatient treatment, and rushed to seek medical treatment when she heard which specialist was good, and took turns to use acupuncture injections, acupuncture cupping, Chinese medicine and physical therapy, but still failed to stop the headache attacks. Only by constantly increasing the dose of painkillers to relieve some of the pain, but also eat hurt stomach, sometimes vomit after eating the medicine, “the torture of people do not want to live, there was a time really want to commit suicide.” Speaking of those days, Ms. Shen still has palpitations.
”I am the same as you, and I can’t get rid of the root of the problem, and then I carry painkillers on my body every day.” Ms. Wang, 55, has been suffering from headaches for 30 years and has been struggling with them most of the time. According to Ms. Wang, in recent years, she has been living in the hospital almost all the year, and is a “veteran”, having lived in all the hospitals in the province and visited all the three authoritative hospitals in Beijing for headache treatment, but still with no effect. “I know it’s not good to take painkillers, but when I have a headache, as long as I take painkillers a little later, I have to keep hurting for a day. So, even if the side effects of this drug are greater, I can not leave, the body all day tucked.” Ms. Wang said helplessly.
”Now, we are lucky to have found President Yuan Xueqian, who helped us to relieve the headache that has plagued us for decades.” Several people said in the same breath.
Expert Yuan Xueqian: “Headache” as a specialty to study
Yuan Xueqian is the vice president of Zhengzhou People’s Hospital, the director of cerebrovascular disease, headache and epilepsy ward (neurology six wards), doctor of neurology, chief physician, part-time professor of Southern Medical University and Xinxiang Medical College, and the supervisor of master’s degree. He has long been devoted to clinical application research of common and difficult critical diseases in neurology such as cerebrovascular disease, headache, dizziness, epilepsy, etc. He has taken the lead in creating formal headache ward, dizziness ward and epilepsy ward in the province and successfully relieved thousands of patients with intractable headache, intractable dizziness and epilepsy. He has been awarded the titles of “Zhengzhou Top Professional and Technical Talents” and “Zhengzhou First Hundred Famous Doctors”.
It is often said that “medicine is not self-governing”, but Yuan Xueqian set his research direction on “headache” because he himself is a headache patient and has personally felt the pain of headache patients, and also discovered the many headache patients and the unsatisfactory treatment effect. Of all the pain complaints that cause human suffering, headache is one of the most common symptoms seen in neurology. The results of the first national survey released that nearly a quarter of our population is suffering from “headache”. Because of the great difficulties in the diagnosis and treatment of headache, there is a situation that “patients have headache and doctors have headache”. From 2000 to 2005, he studied in the Department of Neurology of Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Beijing, China, under the supervision of Professor Xiao Bo, a famous neurologist in China, and received his Ph. After more than ten years of dedicated research, he not only cured himself, but also removed the disease and relieved more headache patients. Now he has cured thousands of patients with intractable headaches.
Speaking of her first impression of President Yuan Xueqian, Auntie Wang, who is in her 60s, was overwhelmed with emotion: “This is the best doctor I have ever seen.” In the winter of 2013, Ms. Wang had a strange headache that made her dizzy and dizzy when she was sick. In order to cure the disease, she went back and forth to several hospitals and specialists, but to no avail.
After hearing that Yuan Xueqian was an expert in treating head neuropathy, she took several bus trips to the hospital. Although she got her number, there were still 20 minutes to go before closing time, and seeing two more patients in front of her, she thought she could only wait until the afternoon. At that moment, President Yuan Xueqian saw several patients through the registration system and took the initiative to say to them, “Please don’t be anxious, I will definitely finish seeing you before the end of the day.” Then to each patient carefully and patiently ask the condition, examination, for the patient to explain, for her to see when it is almost one o’clock.
”The people to the hospital, the most afraid of doctors look ugly, I observed that President Yuan when seeing patients, very kind, serious, sincere, he looked at you with a smile on his face, so that people can not help but give him to tell the condition and pain.”
In this regard, Yuan Xueqian said that many patients in neurology have mental tension or psychological disorders, or are unable to describe their symptoms accurately, so doctors must have a warm, patient attitude and the skills of talks to allow patients to express themselves fully in order to gather information about their medical history that will help in diagnosis.
This good professional habit developed over the years has been deeply burned into Yuan Xueqian. During the interview, Yuan Xueqian received two consultation calls from patients, and he on the other end of the phone always had a smile on his face and answered patiently, making people feel as if he was communicating with patients face to face.
Yuan Xueqian’s “8 hours on the job, 24 hours in charge” has been regarded as a guideline for practicing medicine, and he always keeps his phone open 24 hours a day to facilitate patient consultation. Most of the diseases in neurology are geriatric and chronic, requiring long-term medication and regular checkups. Every time he receives a consultation, Yuan Xueqian takes the initiative to leave his phone number with the patient for regular callbacks. “My patients know that I am very busy during the day, so they like to call me at night for consultation, and it is not uncommon for them to call in the early hours of the night. Patients are entrusted with their lives, and we have to be able to afford this trust.” Yuan Xueqian said.
Headache specialist: the first standardized headache treatment center in the province
Yuan Xueqian said that the biggest misconception in the treatment of headaches is the abuse of painkillers.
”On the surface, taking painkillers will stop the pain, but in fact, taking painkillers for a long time will aggravate the symptoms instead, and medically this kind of headache is called ‘drug overdose headache’.” Yuan Xueqian said that pain is a self-protective mechanism. There is a special body in the brain that regulates headaches, and there is an innate “early warning value”, only when the pain level caused by external stimuli reaches the “early warning value”, the body will feel pain; below the “early warning value If it is lower than the “warning value”, the body will not feel the pain, or the pain is tolerable. However, headache patients have a problem with the specialized pain control mechanism in the brain, which does not reach the normal “warning value” stimulation, they feel the unbearable pain.
”Mostly because they take painkillers for a long time, the function of the pain-regulating mechanism in the brain becomes disordered and the ‘warning value’ becomes lower, so the headache attacks become more and more frequent and heavy.” Yuan Xueqian said.
Yuan Xueqian said that there are specialist headache doctors and headache clinics and wards abroad, but there are too few doctors specializing in headache research in China, and there is still a gap between the level of headache treatment and that of foreign countries, so many chronic headache patients have been bounced between many hospitals, but with little or no effect.
The treatment of headache not only needs advanced and comprehensive examination and diagnosis equipment, but also needs a team of experts with rich experience in treatment, and the service concept of being responsible for patients and insisting on standardized treatment. In 2011, under the leadership of President Yuan Xueqian, Zhengzhou People’s Hospital established the first standardized headache treatment center and epilepsy treatment center in the province.
The six wards of neurology (cerebrovascular headache and epilepsy ward) of Zhengzhou People’s Hospital now have more than 50 beds and a high-quality medical and nursing team of 30 people with strong technical strength, strong responsibility, standardized management and strong academic atmosphere, including one chief physician and three deputy chief physicians; 10 doctoral and master’s degree students. The department makes full use of high-end equipment such as dual-source 64-row CT and 3.0T MRI of the hospital, has a well-equipped neurology laboratory, advanced video EEG, etc. It is an important treatment and research base for neurology diseases in the hospital, and has comprehensively carried out screening of the causes of cerebrovascular diseases, tracing of diseased vessels and standardized treatment, which has relieved the pain of a large number of patients with cerebrovascular diseases. At present, the treatment level of cerebrovascular disease, interventional treatment of cerebrovascular disease, headache, epilepsy and other diseases in the department is in the leading level in the province and city, and has relieved the pain of thousands of patients, and has undertaken a number of clinical research projects in the province and city, and enjoys a high reputation among peers in the province and city.
Efficacy: the gold cup and silver cup is not as good as the people’s word of mouth
”Gold cup and silver cup is better than the people’s word of mouth”, this is Yuan Xueqian’s most appreciated phrase, and it is also a phrase that he often hangs on his lips. The most realistic way to evaluate an expert is to “look at the efficacy without looking at the advertisement”. In recent years, with his good professionalism and standardized treatment methods, Yuan Xueqian has helped patients with intractable headaches to resume their normal lives, and the remarkable efficacy has made each of them become his voluntary advocates.
Yuan Xueqian said that the difficulty of headache treatment is that the etiology is very complicated, and headache is divided into primary headache and secondary headache, of which primary headache accounts for 85%, and it is divided into many kinds, such as migraine, tension headache, cluster headache and miscellaneous headache. Therefore, the key to treatment is to find the real cause of headache according to the history and clinical manifestations of headache, accurately determine its type, and then formulate a treatment plan according to the individual, and adopt a comprehensive treatment of drug application, nerve block, acupuncture and other methods to achieve effective treatment.
The aforementioned Ms. Shen had been diagnosed with neuropathic headache and cluster headache in other hospitals, and after exhausting various methods, her headache became heavier and heavier, and she once had thoughts of lightness of life. After coming to Zhengzhou People’s Hospital, Yuan Xueqian diagnosed her with mixed headache according to her condition and arranged for her to be hospitalized.
”The first two days of hospitalization were not obvious, and I thought it would not be the same as other hospitals. But on the third day of hospitalization, President Yuan gave me a shot and the pain stopped then. After 15 days of treatment, my headache never came back. President Yuan is really the savior of our headache patients. I have to give more publicity to President Yuan, and I can also publish my cell phone number to volunteer to consult and publicize for other patients.” Ms. Shen said excitedly.
Ms. Wang, who had traveled to all the major hospitals in Zhengzhou and Beijing, said straight away that she was lucky to have met President Yuan when her headache stopped the day after she was hospitalized, and that she hadn’t had an attack for more than ten days and hadn’t taken any more painkillers.
Auntie Zhang’s persistent headache had been tormenting her for 40 years. Before she came to the hospital, she had been suffering from headache attacks for 4 consecutive days, with frequent nausea and vomiting, and she felt extremely painful.
While they were happy and thankful, they were also worried about whether they would have a relapse after discharge from the hospital.
Yuan Xueqian explained to them, “There are many types of headaches and complicated causes, and some of the intractable headaches cannot be cured, but after regular treatment, the attacks can be prevented and the pain can be reduced; for example, you have to take painkillers when you are admitted to the hospital, but after treatment, the amount of painkillers you take is reduced and reduced, and finally you don’t have to take them. This is a very good trend. After discharge, without so many treatments to control, the headache may come back again, but then, you may be fine with just one or two painkillers, which achieves the purpose of our treatment.”
Meanwhile, Yuan Xueqian reminded that many headache attacks have certain triggers, such as poor sleep quality, emotional excitement, overwork, and intake of excitatory foods such as alcohol or coffee, so those with a history of headache are advised to avoid these triggers as much as possible. It is recommended that people with a history of headache avoid these triggers as much as possible. It is important to lead a regular life and keep a relaxed mood in order to reduce the chance of headache recurrence.