You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Unusual presentation of more common disease/injury
CASE REPORT
Herpes zoster ophthalmicus evolving into headache characterised as hemicrania continua
  1. Sanjay Prakash,
  2. Ankit Dave,
  3. Hemant Joshi
  1. Department of Neurolgy, Smt BK Shah Medical Institute and Research Centre, Vadodara, India
  1. Correspondence to Sanjay Prakash, drprakashs{at}yahoo.co.in

Summary

Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is the most common chronic complication of herpes zoster infection. However, a few patients may develop different types of pain after herpetic lesions. We are reporting two patients who developed postherpetic hemicrania continua (HC). Case 1: a 54-year-old woman had a 10-month history of continuous left-sided pain with superimposed exacerbations. The pain started with the onset of herpetic lesions in the ophthalmic division. The lesions subsided in a few weeks. However, the pain persisted and it responded exclusively to indomethacin. Case 2: a 61-year-old woman developed clinical features pertinent to PHN. However, later on, the pattern and associated clinical features changed. The patient fulfilled the criteria of HC and showed a complete response to indomethacin. We suggest that every patient with PHN should be asked for cranial autonomic features and a trial of indomethacin should be given in refractory herpes zoster neuropathy.

  • headache (including migraines)
  • pain (neurology)

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2018-224235

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors SP, AD and HJ were involved in the conception and design of the study. SP and AD were involved in the acquisition of data. SP was involved in the manuscript preparation. AD and HJ were involved in revising the draft for intellectual content. All authors approved the final version of this manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.