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A CCORDING TO THE Center for Disease Control and Prevention and National Center for Health statistics, 16 percent of adults suffer from severe headache, 15 percent of adults suffer from neck pain, and 5 percent of adults suffer from face pain. Up to 20 percent of patients don't respond to or cannot tolerate medications. Therefore, multimodal interventional therapies are needed to relieve pain and improve function without the need for painkillers. Interventional procedures can vary from simple peripheral nerve blocks or Botox injections (which can be performed in an office setting) to minimally invasive procedures such as cervical spine injections, radiofrequency ablation, occipital nerve electric stimulation and trigeminal ganglion The New Subspecialty by Samer Narouze, MD, PhD Interventional Headache Medicine: neruromodulation. These are among many other procedures that have proved to be very helpful in patients with intractable head and neck pain. Based on the above statistics, patients with intractable chronic neck pain and headaches represent an important public health problem that cannot be ignored anymore. Despite the need to address this public health problem, many physicians and other healthcare professionals are not adequately trained and require greater knowledge and education to contribute to the cultural transformation of the perception and treatment of people with pain. An interdisciplinary approach with timely interactions between different physicians with unique backgrounds is paramount to the success of such cultural transformation. Physicians from dif- ferent specialities, including neurology, internal medicine, pain medicine, anesthesiology/pain management and neurosurgery, should be working in harmony to successfully implement all of the aspects of multimodal interventional headache management and better serve patients with chronic headaches and pain. The success of this approach has prompted the birth of a new subspecialty named Interventional Headache Medicine and the establishment of the American Interventional Headache Society (AIHS). AIHS is a national professional organization of physicians, dentists and other healthcare professionals and scientists working for the benefit of people suffering from intractable headache, neck, and orofacial pain unresponsive to conventional treatment. The purpose of AIHS is to raise awareness, promote, and advance interventional headache science through better education, patient care and research support. Dr. Narouze is the Chairman of the Center for Pain Medicine at Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He is also Clinical Professor of Neurological Surgery at Ohio State University, Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology and Pain Management at Ohio University College of Medicine, Associate Professor of Surger y at NEOMED, and President of the AIHS. ■ 16% 5% 15% OF ADULTS SUFFER FROM SEVERE HEADACHE OF ADULTS SUFFER FROM FACE PAIN OF ADULTS SUFFER FROM NECK PAIN ACCORDING TO THE CDC AND NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + +++ + +++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SPECIAL SECTION: PAIN MANAGEMENT❯ 1 6 | Cleveland/Akron/Canton MD NEWS ■ M D N E W S . CO M ■ M AY/J U N E 2 0 1 5