Cluster headache — a symptom of different problems or a primary form? A case report

Abstract

Headache with severe, strictly one-sided unilateral attacks of pain in orbital, supraorbital, temporal localisation lasting 15-180 minutes occurring from once every two days to 8 times daily, typically with one or more autonomic symptoms, is recognized as cluster headache (CH). Headache with normal neurological examination and abnormal neuroimaging studies, mimicking cluster headache, is reported by several authors.

We present an elderly woman with a cluster-like headache probably associated with other comorbidities. We differentiate between primary, but ‘atypical’ CH and symptomatic cluster headache due to frontal sinusitis, pontine venous angioma or vascular compression of the trigeminal nerve root. This headache is not so rare in the general population and its secondary causes must be ruled out before the diagnosis of a primary headache as cluster headache is made.