What is an occipital nerve block?
An occipital nerve block is an injection of a steroid or other medication around the greater and lesser occipital nerves that are located on the back of the head just above the neck area.

What is the purpose of an occipital nerve block?
The steroid injected reduces the inflammation and swelling of tissue around the occipital nerves. This may in turn reduce pain, and other symptoms caused by inflammation and/or irritation of the nerves and surrounding structures. Typically, headaches over the back of the head, including certain types of tension headaches may respond to occipital nerve blocks.

Post-injection:
Immediately after the injection, you may feel that your pain may be gone or quite less. This is due to the local anesthetic injected. This will last only for a few hours. Your pain may return and you may have a sore head for a day or two. This is due to the mechanical process of needle insertion as well as initial irritation from the steroid itself. You should start noticing a more lasting pain relief starting the third day or so.

Other:
Occipital Neuralgia will typically follow a trauma to the nerves over the occipital region (back of the head) and is characterized by an acute onset of pain in the distribution of the occipital nerves. Cervicogenic headache is more chronic, with an insidious onset, characterized by pain in the same distribution. Most patients with Cervicogenic headaches have associated spondylosis or problems of the cervical facet joints in the neck and therefore may need an additional injection in the cervical facet joint to completely alleviate their symptoms.

Recovery:
Same as others