Mullner M, Thoennissen J, Herkner H, Lang W, Laggner AN; International Cochrane Colloquium (8th : 2000 : Cape Town, South Africa).

Evid Action Int Cochrane Colloq 8th 2000 Cape Town S Afr. 2000; 8: UNKNOWN.

Department of Emergency Medicine and Department of Neurology University of Vienna, Medical School

PURPOSE: To performe a systematic literature review of randomised controlled trials to assess if bed rest can prevent postpunctural headache.STUDY SELECTION: We searched EMBASE (89-9/99), MEDLINE [TM] (66-9/99), PASCAL BioMed (96-9/ 99), CC Search [TM] CSI (97-9/99), PsychLIT (70-9/99), the Cochrane Controlled trial register, textbooks and references of the papers selected. The search term was [(headache or cephalea or ceph-alalgia) and (bed rest or bedrest or bed-rest or posture or recumbency or recumb*) and (lumbar or postlumbar or spinal or dural or puncture or punct* or postpunct*) and (randomised or randomized or randomi*)]. Studies were eligible if patients underwent lumbar or suboccipital puncture for any reason and were randomised to a prolonged period of bed rest in one group and a short period of bed rest in another group and if the occurrence of headache was recorded in absolute numbers.DATA EXTRACTION: Data were abstracted by two investigators independently and in duplicate to a predefined form.DATA SYNTHESIS: We found 15 randomised controlled trials with 1001 patients assigned to immediate mobilsation or a short period of bed rest and 1050 patients assigned to a long period of bed rest (see figure). There was clinical and statistical heterogeneity so we did not attempt quantitative data synthesis.The frequency of headache ranged from 9% to 60%. None of the studies, however, showed that bed rest was superior to early mobilisation for preventing postpunctural headache in any of the clinical situations described. In general it appeared that there was no difference in headache between the groups and in two studies bed rest increased the frequency of headache significantly; both studies included relatively small numbers of patients.CONCLUSION: There was no evidence that bed rest after cervical or lumbar puncture helps to reduce the occurrence of headache.

Publication Types:

• Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

• Bed Rest
• Biomedical Research
• Clinical Trials as Topic
• Early Ambulation
• Headache
• Humans
• Spinal Puncture
• United States
• injuries
• rehabilitation
• hsrmtgs

Other ID:

• GWHSR0001250

UI: 102272925

From Meeting Abstracts