Stiff Neck Causes

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Symptoms Diagnosis Treatment

Any related pain sensation in the head, particularly in the cranial vault. It is one of the most common complaints and may be a benign symptom, an expression of a simple strain or tension, or if strong and persistent, a symptom of brain disease, such as a hematoma, encephalitis, meningitis, or it can be an expression of severe hypertension. In all these cases are referred to c. secondary, as symptomatic of an organic disease, while in contingencies where it is not possible to identify a precise cause, the c. is considered primitive or essential.

Symptoms

The type of pain can be fixed or button, its duration, its localizzazone, and all the conditions that foster it and the trigger or otherwise resulting in its resolution. There are also significant repetition and intensity of pain, which can reach up to unbearable tips make it very painful to the patient’s life, and the frequency of painful attacks in addition to their duration (minutes, hours or days). Schematically one can distinguish between different types of c., including migraine and c. muscle-tensive. For migraine is defined as a series of acute attacks of c. to one half of the head, often accompanied by nausea and vomiting and preceded by visual disturbances such as zig-zag lights and photophobia, onset in adolescence or in young people, often members of families in which other individuals are affected, and generally more frequent in women with premenstrual exacerbation in the period. The pathogenesis of migraine is related to changes in cerebral blood flow due to arteriolar constriction and subsequent vasodilation. Instead of migraine, the c. muscle-tensive usually affects adulthood, and no familiarity can have a substantial duration, even disturbing sleep. The pain is more common than migraines, affecting also the posterior portion of the skull and neck. It is easily triggered by emotions, stress and nervous tension and is common in people with depression and anxiety, so much so that sometimes can be treated with psychotherapy. Are possible and far from rare forms of c. mixed, with both components, vascular and musculo-tensive. A particular type of migraine is defined as the last c. cluster, consisting of attacks of extremely intense pain localized to the orbit and periorbital region, accompanied by lacrimation, rhinorrhea, swelling and redness of the affected area. The duration is very short but the discomfort of patients, mostly men, is very strong, the frequency of attacks is variable, but fortunately is usually not high, although psychological and emotional factors, as well as stress and hard work , may be enhanced.

Diagnosis

Should be differentiated by appropriate instrumental investigations (EEG, CAT scan, Doppler, etc..) Primary headaches (migraine, cluster headache) and those secondary to other diseases (hypertension, meningitis, encephalitis, brain tumors, Stiff Neck Causes headache, temporal arteritis, etc.). because the secondary is the cause that goes untreated, the headache is just a symptom of an underlying disease.

Therapy

The migraine attack therapy is based on the use of NSAIDs such as aspirin and the like, and the rest, possibly in the dark and silence. For those who suffer from recurrent attacks of therapy is also recommended that fund includes a wide range of drugs such as methysergide, propranolol, Pizotifen, amitriptyline and phenelzine. More recent techniques as biofeedback, with which the person learns their own checks the tone and caliber of blood vessels. The treatment of c. tensive muscle is very pivot on relaxation techniques, Stiff Neck Causes the massage, and psychotherapy, but does not exclude the use of drugs, especially mild sedatives and antidepressants, using the pain killers just in case of attacks of severe pain. Recently entered clinical use a new drug, sumatriptan, which is a specific antagonist and selective serotonin receptor 5HT1-LIKE in particular brain vessel that is used to block or abort the acute attacks of migraine and headache cluster. Genetics is also targeted towards research into the causes of certain c., such as Stiff Neck Causes headache, a family, where we assumed a hereditary component. In 1996 he was identified (University of Leiden, Netherlands) a gene responsible for the transport of calcium between brain cells, which would be responsible for a rare form of migraine known as’ familiar hemiplegic migraine. ” If this gene does not function normally the result of fluctuations in the level of football is reflected in the functioning of certain neurotransmitters, whose alteration has been associated with this type of headache. The first consequence of this discovery is the initiation of research to identify the genetic component of other forms of c. and at the same time to develop drug therapies aimed at restoring the proper level of calcium that flows between neurons.