The Diagnosis Of A Headache Is An Amazingly Difficult Job

By Author: Donald Saunders
Total Articles: 84
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Diagnosing a headache should be one of the simplest things in the world since almost every adult suffers from them and when you get one then you definitely know about it. But, despite the obvious pain, diagnosing a headache is a little bit more difficult than you might think.

Astonishingly there are no general tests for diagnosing a headache and if you think you have a headache and are experiencing pain then all you can really do is tell your physician exactly how you are feeling and he has to come up with a diagnosis on the basis of whatever you tell him. However, one significant problem is that when it comes to talking about symptoms descriptions can and do vary markedly.

Some people simply are not as communicative as others when it comes to talking about how they feel and our frequently limited vocabulary does not help us either. Talking about having a 'stabbing pain' might seem like a very good description to you but it does not necessarily be too helpful to your physician.

As if all of this was not bad enough diagnosing a headache is made even harder by the fact that headaches come in various different ...
... types.

Tension headaches which arise from inflamed neck or facial muscles and dilated head blood vessels amongst other things do not usually get diagnosed professionally because most people merely treat them themselves with analgesics or just wait until they disappear.

By contrast, migraines are far worse and are much more likely to occasion a visit to your physician although even here about half of sufferers never seek professional help.

Physicians are able to use a number of factors in order to diagnose a particular form of headache and advise an appropriate treatment and, despite the fact that the pain felt is subjective, the form of pain is indicative of the type of headache. For example, migraines often produce strong throbbing or pulsating sensations while in ordinary tension headaches pain is normally more diffuse and regular.

Migraine headaches are also generally accompanied by nausea as well as a sensitivity to light and sound, cold extremities and several other signs that sufferers recognize. And, because these symptoms tend to be more or less identical from one patient to another, physicians are faced with an objective set of symptoms on which they are able to base a sound diagnosis.

Cluster headaches are typified by a strong pain behind the eye or temple that occurs for generally half an hour to an hour and then re-occur the next day at roughly the same time. Cluster headaches can continue for several weeks and, once more as they are quite regular, physicians have something on which to base their diagnosis.

In cases where a headache is the effect of some serious underlying condition like a brain tumor, physicians are able to identify this without undue difficulty. For example, MRI or CT scans can be used to look for well known brain patterns that can link the headache to the physical problem which underlies it.

Headaches which tend to worsen over time also provide physicians with a clue, as do patterns of pain which shift quickly, and this could for example indicate an aneurysm (a weakened blood vessel) as the root cause.

Diagnosing a headache is complicated because of many different forms of headache and the variety of symptoms. Nonetheless the key is to gather together as much information as is possible both from the patient and clinical testing.