Introduction & Objective: Headache is a complication of spinal anesthesia, which also cause fear in scheduled patients. Headache may have a severity which may disturb patient's life. Headache also can persist from days to months. Many different measures can be used for preventing that including small size needles, delay in ambulation, hydration and so on. This study was conducted to evaluate the therapeutic effects of propranolol on post spinal anesthesia headache.
Materials & Methods: This is a double blind clinical trial. In this study we selected 60 patients (from ASA class I, II) who undergone operation (gynecological and urorlogical) with spinal anesthesia and had post spinal headache. Patients were randomly divided into 2 groups for treatment. The first group was treated with propranolol, 20mg, twice a day and the second group was treated with acetaminophen, 325mg, twice a day. Pain severity was measured by Mankosky pain scale. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS software.
Results: mean of severity of pain was 6.33 versus 4.6 in propranolol group (before and after treatment) and 6.36 versus 5.56 in acetaminophen group (before and after treatment). These differences were statistically significant (p<0.05).
Conclusion: Propranolol can be used for treatment of post spinal headache in patients who has no contraindication for use of this medicine.