Posted by Laurence on August 21, 1998 at 14:37:44:
In Reply to: Fall or Injury ...possible connection??? posted by Cassandra on August 20, 1998 at 22:11:12:
Hi Cassandra,
I am really pleased that everybody here may have been able to help you and your mother, at least a little, to get through this difficult patch. As you may now be suffering from cluster information overload - I went through a similar experience myself when I first found the site three months ago and then “gorged” myself on all the information – it is very easy to forget what or where you read a particular detail. I suspect that you went through (as I did) DJ’s “Fantastic” link at the top of this message board page and came across the following extract in the text:
“There is some evidence that head trauma can precipitate the syndrome. Among the 180 patients studied by Manzoni et al (1983b), previous head injury was reported by 41, with loss of consciousness occurring in 20. This is significantly more frequent than is observed among patients with other types of headache; furthermore, in all patients in whom the head injury was lateralized and loss of consciousness ensued, the side involved corresponded to the side on which cluster headache later occurred. However, the mean latency in these cases was 9 years, which poses a serious question regarding the connection between head trauma and the cause of the cluster headache syndrome. Moreover, in an additional 11 of 15 patients who had undergone previous cranio-facial surgery, the side operated on was ipsilateral to that of the site of later-appearing cluster headache attacks. The latency between these latter events averaged 5 years. Kudrow has found no evidence that head trauma can precipitate the syndrome (Kudrow, 1980).”
In my own case, I clearly have no idea and no way of checking whether a road accident I suffered as a child, and which put me in a coma for three hours, ultimately led to my suffering from clusters some 30 or so years later. I suppose it may just be possible that like other more everyday types of triggers that we all know about, some of which affect some of us but not others, head trauma may be for some the first significant trigger. For that to be the case, however, I think there still would have to have been some already underlying weakness or propensity that is set off by the head trauma.
As you will have seen from Simon’s message below on new research in the UK, one problem is that no one yet knows exactly where in the brain clusters actually start. It’s all that cause and effect stuff. Are the doctors and their machines only witnessing and recording a symptom of the condition rather than its precise originating source in the brain? If they can at least locate where in the brain it starts from, I guess they might just then be some way on the road to start working out what is happening, or happened, in that particular part of the brain to cause clusters in the first place.
Bye for now
Laurence