Consider Paroxysmal Hemicrania

Paroxysmal Hemicrania

Paroxysmal hemicrania (PH) involves one-sided attacks (headaches) that have very similar characteristics of pain and associated (cranial autonomic) symptoms of cluster headache (CH). However, the headaches tend to be very much shorter in duration and usually occur many more times a day.

An average attack lasts twenty minutes, but can be as short as two minutes or as long as 45 minutes. They also tend to occur on average more frequently than CH – typically ten times a day and sometimes up to 40 per day. As with both CH and migraine there are two variants of PH: chronic and episodic, defined in exactly the same way as in CH.

If this brief description does not match your headache type, consider Cluster Headache and/or SUNCT/SUNA

If your headaches only ever wake you during sleep, consider Hypnic Headache.

Treatment

Like many of the other shorter lasting primary headaches, paroxysmal hemicrania (PH) responds almost absolutely to a medication called indomethacin (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug), and it is noteworthy that this course of action is often used as a screening investigation to rule out CH amongst some sufferers.