Epileptic Headache , A Rare Painful Seizure

Introduction: epileptic headache (EH) is a rare combination of epilepsy and headache. Result: EH may occur at any age, affects both sexes equally .in some patients it has features of migraine, or as a tension-type headache, while in others is indefinable. The kind of pain and its location may also vary. It may last for seconds to days, in which case it is a headache/status epilepticus.A shorter duration seems to be more frequent in the case of temporal and anterior foci.Minor accompanying symptoms in about half of the cases include phono/photophobia, vomiting, pallor, difficulty in talking, agitation. Ictal EEG recordings show abnormalities compatible with an epileptic seizure that begin and stop at the same time as the headache. In some cases, the abnormalities can only be detected by deep electrodes.Interictal EEG abnormalities may be present or not, and the patient may also experience other kinds of epileptic seizure.The brain diseases detected include genetic encephalopathies,trauma, malformations/dysplasias, neoplasms and chronic encephalitis; idiopathic epilepsy has only been reported in two cases. Lesions may be occipital, parietal, temporal or frontal, and the variable features of the headache do not always correlate with the site of the lesion or EEG focus. Conclusions: EH must be diagnosed on the basis of the presence of EEG epileptic activity coinciding with the duration of the pain. The positive effect of the acute administration of an anti-epileptic drug on the headache episode suggests the possibility of EH and the appropriateness of making an ictal EEG recording.

کلیدواژه ها:

epilepsy ، heaedache