Modification of therapeutic temperature range in cryotherapy could improve clinical efficacy in tension type headache

Cold pack therapy is not used frequently in clinics in spite of its effectiveness in clinical reports. Low compliance due to cold intolerance may be a disturbance factor that hinders patients from using the modality.

To demonstrate the improved compliance and clinical efficacy as new devised cold modality with a different composition is applied to target different therapeutic temperature range in tension-type headache (TTH) patients.

A randomized, controlled, comparative trial involving 53 patients with tension-type headache was conducted. A new cold modality that targets upper normal therapeutic temperature range was devised and applied to one group (n= 27) and ice pack was applied to the other group (n= 26).

After application of two modalities for 4 weeks, the amount of analgesics intake, modality use per week, and Likert survey of cold intolerance were significantly different between the two groups.

Rather than focusing on lowering the skin temperature indefinitely, optimizing tolerability by targeting the temperature at the upper therapeutic range could be more effective in cold modality application.