News Releases
Memorial Hermann Medical Group Welcomes Pamela Blake M.D. and Headache Treatment Center of Northwest
Houston, Texas, December 8, 2006 – Pamela Blake, M.D., a board-certified neurologist and renowned headache treatment specialist, has founded Headache Treatment Center of Northwest as part of Memorial Hermann Medical Group.
Dr. Blake, who comes to Houston from Washington, D.C., has developed novel treatments for chronic daily headaches that are due to a condition known as focal cranial neuralgia.
Dr. Blake is one of the only physicians in the nation employing, in collaboration with a plastic surgeon, a novel, minimally invasive, outpatient surgical procedure to combat chronic daily headache. She and her colleagues in Washington pioneered the procedure to treat patients who did not respond to more conventional treatment for chronic daily headache. They performed 150 of these procedures, with 66 percent of patients reporting a greater than 50 percent reduction in pain. In Houston, Dr. Blake offers the procedure in collaboration with plastic surgeon Carlton Perry, M.D.
To determine if a patient is a candidate for the procedure, Dr. Blake utilizes nerve blocks, an infrequently used approach to headache diagnosis that involves a series of steroid injections into the compressed nerve to diagnose and possibly treat the condition. Dr. Blake also performs medication management and other more traditional forms of treatment for patients with chronic headache.
“Chronic daily headaches, which affect up to 40 million people in the United States, are headaches that occur at least 15 days per month,” Dr. Blake said. “These headaches, which often are confused with migraines, frequently stem from a compressed nerve. An aggressive search for the cause of the headaches usually will lead to a treatable condition, and we are pleased to have determined that this simple and safe procedure is effective in a large percentage of patients.”
A graduate of the University of Scranton in Scranton, Penn., Dr. Blake received her medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed an internship in internal medicine at Washington Hospital Center. She completed a residency in neurology at Georgetown University Hospital and a fellowship in neuro-ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
From 1995 to 2006, Dr. Blake was a faculty member of the Georgetown University Hospital Department of Neurology, where she was director of the Georgetown Headache Clinic. She is actively engaged in research in behavioral neurology and cognitive sciences, and she served as volunteer faculty in the Cognitive Neurosciences Section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.
“We are delighted to have Dr. Blake join our growing enterprise,” said Medical Director Ernest Bartimmo, M.D. “As part of Memorial Hermann Medical Group, our doctors will be able to spend more time practicing medicine and less time worrying about running businesses. By emphasizing the strengths of the partners, the patient is the ultimate winner.”
Dr. Blake will focus on growing her practice while Memorial Hermann will provide business office and technology support services including deploying an integrated electronic medical record, billing and collecting, insurance reimbursement contracting and information technology.
“I look forward to working closely with Memorial Hermann to deliver the highest quality medical care to patients,” Dr. Blake said.
Headache Treatment Center of Northwest is located at 1631 N. Loop W., Suite 640. For appointments, please call 713-426-3337.
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