Thilinie Rajapakse

Summary:

Migraine and headache disorders are common, painful and disabling for children and adults. They affect 1 in 10 children and 1 in 6 adults causing significant pain, disability and reduced quality of life. I have a research interest in improving the treatment of headache/facial pain disorders in children using less medication focused and more precise, targeted methods. This means less pills and researching new treatments like small targeted anesthetic injections (nerve blocks) or new devices that externally stimulate nerves that are safe and well tolerated. We use MRI to take pictures of the brains of teenagers with chronic migraine to understand if there are early brain changes that we can recognize and address with fast treatment to avoid the development of chronic pain and disability in adulthood. My research focuses on - People: Helping individual patients with targeted therapies, clinical trial access Places: Improving care pathways for headache in hospital and clinic settings Province: Widening the scope to examine (with the use of administrative health data) how patients with headache disorders live and access headache care in the province of Alberta and within Canada.