Los Angeles Brain

Accurate diagnosis is necessary for effective treatment of headache conditions

 

There are numerous types of headaches: migraine, post-concussive, occipital neuralgia, tension, trigenimal neuralgia, cervical neck related, cluster, and many others.  Treatment is very different for different types of headaches, and frequently patients are treated for the wrong headache diagnosis.

 

What are the types of headaches and effective treatments?

​

• Migraine:.  Migraines are typically experienced as one sided head pain with nausea, visual auras and other neurological symptoms.  Effective treatments include medications to prevent the migraines from occurring, medications to directly treat the migraine pain, botulinum injections, and new treatments that interrupts the process that leads to migraine..

• Occipital neuralgia:.  Compression of the nerves in the back of the head and neck can occur after trauma or along with neck pain.  Treatment focuses on decreasing sensitivity of these nerves with medications or by directly stimulating the nerve, and decompression of these nerves by injections and physical and other therapies.

• Cluster headaches:  "Ice pick" headaches can occur behind the eye and can be devastating in severity.  Medications and new therapies can be effective at treating cluster headache conditions.

• Trigeminal neuralgia:  Severe shooting pain across a side of the face can occur as a result of dysfunction of the trigeminal nerve.  Effective in-office treatments of trigeminal neuralgia include oral medications and injections. 

• Other headaches:  Accurate diagnosis is necessary to identify and effectively treat other not-so-common headache syndromes, including medication-related headaches, sinus headaches, cervical neck-related headaches, nerve-damage and neuropathic headaches, hypertension-related headaches, and many more.