Atypical Migraine

Making atypical migraine typical

Migraines can be pretty inconvenient when it chooses to. In addition to the severe pain that it delivers every episode, it is also so unpredictable that one cannot seem to anticipate when the next attack will be.

To date, about 23 million people in the United States are suffering from one form of migraine. Among these 23 million people, about 8 million suffer from so much pain that they can no longer perform their daily chores. Because of migraine alone, about 17 billion dollars are lost.

Treating migraines can however be pretty difficult not because it is hard to treat or that there are no medications that can treat the disease but because it is so erratic that doctors find it hard to prescribe medicines that will prevent an attack from recurring. This is why migraines are often treated symptomatically, meaning that the condition is treated when an attack occur and not before.

Another reason why migraines require complex treatment is the fact that it has so many forms and classifications that doctors cannot diagnose at first glance just what it is unlike with other problems, which have specific symptoms.

One of the “confusing” form of migraine is the atypical migraine. From the name itself, you’ll see that this is not your typical form of migraine. Many patients are in fact confused by this diagnosis. As a rule of thumb, doctors use the diagnosis of an atypical migraine if the patient’s migraine attacks do not fit the normal migraine profile. The profile may include severity of the attacks, frequency of the attacks and of course the symptoms, which are the primary source of information. Doctors do admit that these can be really tricky. Thus, it is quite uncommon for a doctor to make this diagnosis unless all avenues are covered.

Diagnosis can be crucial as most symptoms of migraines may also be found in other diseases. If the symptomatic episodes do no fit the pattern, the doctor must make sure that what you have is indeed just a migraine and not another disease.
With atypical migraine, there is actually no prescribed set of symptoms. Remember that this is a diagnosis given when there is no other diagnosis that will fit. But what is a typical migraine?

Often, a migraine will involve a severe headache that may manifest on one or both sides of the head. People suffering from migraines will also experience some form of nausea and dizzy spells as well as bouts of vomiting. Some, especially those suffering from the classical type of migraine, will also experience some auras, which are not as common. Examples of these auras are visual auras where patients will see a white light or a bright spot in their line of vision, double vision and even temporary blindness. They will also experience some form of numbness in parts of their bodies especially in the extremities; vertigo and tingling sensations.

Headaches are basically the primary symptom of migraines. There is however a migraine that do not involve headaches. This is called the silent migraine or the acephalgic migraine, which is largely an eye migraine. Acephalgic migraine is typically classified as an atypical migraine because of the absence of headache in the list of symptoms. Other episodes of migraine which are often classified as atypical are attacks that involve facial pain, which is really quite rare and the attacks in children that involve no headache, just nausea and abdominal pain.