“Quantifying the Global Burden of Extreme Pain from Cluster Headaches” by Alfredo Parra 🔸

Warning: This post discusses statistics about extreme pain that may be distressing. While cluster headaches are a neglected, high-impact issue, understanding their true burden requires appreciating the intensity of suffering involved. The pain often reaches levels far beyond typical human experience, making subjective accounts a valuable datapoint until we have robust methods for quantifying pain intensity. For further context, links to firsthand accounts are provided in the footnote[1].

You no longer have a headache, or pain located at a particular site: you are literally plunged into the pain, like in a swimming pool. There is only one thing that remains of you: your agitated lucidity and the pain that invades everything, takes everything. There is nothing but pain. At that point, you would give everything, including your head, your own life, to make it stop.

- Yves, cluster headache patient from France (from Rossi et al., 2018)

Key [...]

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Outline:

(01:11) Key takeaways

(03:57) 1. Introduction

(04:00) 1.1. Clinical Features and Pain Comparisons

(07:22) 1.2. Treatment and Prevention

(10:02) 1.3. The Heavy-Tailed Valence Hypothesis and Existing Metrics

(14:49) 1.4. Goal

(16:14) 2. Methods

(17:43) 2.1 Prevalence

(19:17) 2.2 Frequency

(22:21) 2.3 Duration

(23:53) 2.4 Intensity

(25:58) 2.5 Burden Metrics

(29:01) 3. Results

(29:10) 3.1. Global Burden of Cluster Headache Pain

(32:05) 3.2. Reweighting of Extreme Pain

(39:41) 3.3. Ceiling Effects

(43:34) 4. Recommendations and Conclusions

(48:31) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 26 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/geh2g2nKb7Kkp26ze/quantifying-the-global-burden-of-extreme-pain-from-cluster

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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