Does anyone know where I can find info with regard to cluster headaches coming on after neck injury or in relationship to PTSD?

Google Peter Goadsby and read.
all the best
the bb

It's a difficult call to distinguish between cluster-LIKE headaches from Cluster Headache (as a primary disorder).

A number of conditions can produce some syptoms which are like those of CH but this does not mean the person has CH. This clouds the picture in making a diagnosis. I suspect this is the issue around old head injuries. At least one report has suggested such an injury as long as 30-years earlier has been associated with CH--but scant to no evidence so far.

Further complications arise from abortives which may work with cluster-LIKE headaches, a response which one would suspect confirms the Dx of CH. Not the case; can, in fact, be misleading, at times.

Just a few of the complications behind the problem of getting a solid diagnosis, at times.

Thank you for your response.
I have CH and have been living with it for ten+ years, diagnosed by a neurologist.
When you google Peter Goadsby, too much shows up and one doesn't know where to start looking.
What I am looking for is the cause, I broke my neck in 95 and I also have PTSD, I was hoping to find a link as the CH appeared one year after the neck injury and coincidently one year after the PTSD related incidents.

Thanks all the same.

tommyboy,

This is a good question.  PTSD is associated with "headaches".  I wonder what kind of headaches?  I think that it is worth someone doing some kind of study on.
I had a head injury when I was young (2 years old).  I fell out of a shopping cart onto my head on the area where the CH occur (my mother has confirmed this).  SHE believes that that is why I get cluster headache (they started at 14).  I am not sure I agree with her.  But I sometimes wonder if she could be right.

My husband Jay has had CH for 15 yrs and chronic for 5. He had a bad fall and hit is head on concrete 2 times and was knocked for a loop for 3 months, this was around the time he bacame chronic, we have asked every DR about this and they swear this has nothing to do with CH...... but we wonder if this is the reason he became chronic rather than episodic. But maybe we are just looking too hard for an answer to a horrible disease, we dont really understand...... best of luck to you and many PF days.

Layla328 wrote on Nov 21^st, 2008 at 11:30am:

tommyboy, This is a good question.  PTSD is associated with "headaches".  I wonder what kind of headaches?  I think that it is worth someone doing some kind of study on. I had a head injury when I was young (2 years old).  I fell out of a shopping cart onto my head on the area where the CH occur (my mother has confirmed this).  SHE believes that that is why I get cluster headache (they started at 14).  I am not sure I agree with her.  But I sometimes wonder if she could be right.

I have PTSD, but no special headaches from it that I know of. Mine is due to medical trauma inflicted on me over the years. My Mom also has it, and used to get PTSD headaches.

She said some were sharp and stabbing, horrible, they incapacitate you. (But I remember her being able to lie down with them. So definately not a cluster.)

Mom said that I had been knocked out before when I was a kid... I was running, and ran headfirst into the back of a shopping cart. I hit it so hard I passed out. (It hit across my forehead, no one side was hit..) We're now starting to wonder about this...

Yeah, I pooh-poohed the idea of my head injury being related for the longest time.  My neuros pooh-poohed it too (probably cause of the time elapsed).  But After 20 years though and considering all different explanations, it wouldn't surprise me if head injury led to CH for me.  Seems kinda funny that I hit my head in the same place I get the HAs.  Plus, stupid as it may sound, mother's usually have a sixth sense about these things.

::)

tommyboy wrote on Nov 18^th, 2008 at 11:27am:

Does anyone know where I can find info with regard to cluster headaches coming on after neck injury or in relationship to PTSD?

Go to the upper right hand corner of the screen and Google "head injury", then click below the Google box "search Clusterheadaches.com" and it'll pull up tons of posts.

There was a doctor who conducted a survey using CH.com people.  One of the survey questions was about head trauma.

Some years back I was talking with our own Doc Greg about speaking at the Vancouver OUCH convention and he commented on the other doctor's survey, especially how many clusterheads had head trauma before their clusters started.  He was very intrigued by this.

Wonder where Greg went?

In my research of CH there is a highte rate of severe head injury in people with CH than those without CH.  It looks like there is a coorelation but there has never been any proof that I am aware of.  The same is true for CH and MS.  Folks with CH have a higher rate of MS than the rest of the population but again nothing has ever been proven.

It is a very complex issue because there are so many factors involved.  Do people with CH have a personality that predisposes them to risk taking where head injury can occure?  

-P.

Neuros that I have talked to, especially the "headache specialists", do not seem skeptical that head injury could cause cluster headaches.  The best guy I have seen asked for all specifics involving any head injury at any time.  I don't know though I think that when there is a long time between head injury and onset they do not know what to make of that.  

Paul98 wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2008 at 7:56am:

Do people with CH have a personality that predisposes them to risk taking where head injury can occure?   -P.

Well, if you call having your head bent down in a Cougar to change the radio dial while the car collides with a deer risk taking, then yeah...

(whiplash here, then CH onset a few months later)

Ow!!!!  That stinks!  Car accidents are scary (was in one myself last year), even worse if it triggers something like CH.

Two concussions before the onset of CH.....a bad one in my teen years.....a mild one the year before they started. Connection? Who knows?

B