According to a new study, a small percentage of people who experience headaches also suffer from facial pain.
People may delay getting treatment for facial pain as not many people know the connection between headaches and facial pain, according to Dr Arne May, study author and a neurology professor at the University of Hamburg in Germany.
For the study, researchers evaluated2,912 people who suffer from primary headaches - a headache that is not caused by any other condition. Those that reported having dental issues along with headaches were excluded from the city. Through the data, the team found close to 10 per cent of the participants experienced facial pain along with a headache.
Sensitization of nerves that happens in people who suffer from headaches is the main cause for facial pain, according to Dr Yury Khelemsky, an interventional pain specialist focusing on head and neck pain at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. "Treating headache and facial pain without addressing the underlying neck issues often misses the mark,” Khelemsky told a news portal. Adding, “Pain within the sinus region is often misdiagnosed as ‘sinus headache'."
Because many people do not know about this connection, they are more likely to identify it as something else. “We often hear patients complaining about jaw pain with headaches or migraine and eye pain,” Deena Kuruvilla, an assistant professor of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine. Adding," “I have so many patients who have had unnecessary procedures because of a misconception that facial pain has to be related to jaw or tooth pathology, sinuses, or a primary eye issue."
However, further research is needed to determine whether or not facial pain is a syndrome. “Unfortunately, the study defined facial pain in a way that excluded pain above the eyes and in the forehead… locations where many patients with primary headaches report pain different from that of their typical headaches,” Khelemsky told a news portal.
The study's findings were originally published in the journal Neurology.
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