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Contact Point Headaches
Contact point headaches are a source of intense pain for a number of people. “The chronic daily headache pain was like a tight skull cap. It completely encompassed the top of my head,” says Joanne Schultz.
58 year old Joanne Schultz says that since she was just 4 years old, she has suffered with excruciating contact point headaches.
“The kind of pain caused by contact point headaches can be really debilitating, depressing and really exhausting,” says Joanne.
Through the years, Joanne jumped from doctor to doctor. She was diagnosed with migraine and sinus headaches. Joanne tried a bevy of powerful pain relievers, none of which provided any substantial relief from her contact point headaches. But last spring, the debilitating pain she endured for decades finally came to an end.
“I woke up from the anesthesia and that headache that I have always had for more than 50 years wasn’t there anymore,” says Joanne. After several diagnostic tests, doctors determined Joanne was battling contact point headaches.
“A contact point headache is a headache that comes from contact between two structures in the nose, the septum which is the part of the nose that divides that nose in half and either a turbinate which is a boney structure in the nose or the septum hits one of the walls of one of the sinuses. And when those two, when those two structures come in contact, it causes pain which radiates over the eyebrow,” says Dr. Larry Newman, Director of the Headache Institute at Roosevelt Hospital.
According to Dr. Newman, Director of the Headache Institute at Roosevelt Hospital, a contact point headache can be tricky to diagnose because its symptoms very often mimic those of a migraine.
“Most neurologists don’t know about contact point headaches. This is a disorder that is usually discussed in ENT circles. It’s only recently that it’s come to the forefront for neurologists”, says Dr. Newman.
Patients suspected to have contact point headaches are usually sent for a CAT scan or MRI. The images generated will reveal the contact point.
“The surgery is aimed at relieving the contact between those two structures and once it’s separated, the patient has relief of their contact point headache,” says Dr. Newman.
For Joanne, she says the result of her surgery, was nothing short of a miracle. “In many ways it’s kind of miraculous that some surgery in my nose would take care of a contact point headache, a condition that has plagued me for more than 50 years.”
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