Study: Most Sinus Headaches Are Migraines

June 24, 2002 -- Think sinus pain, pressure and congestion are sure signs of a sinus headache? You could be wrong, and the error could be hurting you.

The vast majority of people who believe they are having sinus headaches are actually having migraines, according to new research presented last week at a meeting of the American Headache Society in Seattle.

Closer scrutiny of the 2,524 subjects in the study found that their physician-diagnosed or self-described sinus headaches were migraine-type headaches a full 90 percent of the time.

"People think they have sinus headaches. It's the association of pain in the front of the face and pressure under the eyes," explains Dr. Joel Saper, director of the Michigan Pain and Neurological Institute in Ann Arbor. "It's an innocent misunderstanding."

Adds Dr. Curtis Schreiber, associate director of the Headache Center in Springfield, Mo., who presented the research: "We would find that they had symptoms that involved their sinus or nasal passages, but as they described the rest of their symptoms, they had other features that really led us to think they had migraine underlying all of their symptoms."

Sinus Pain in Migraine

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An estimated 28 million Americans suffer from migraine headaches, but only about half of these are ever diagnosed.

Diagnosis of migraines relies upon using a checklist of symptoms that include intensity and type of pain, nausea or vomiting and sensitivity to light or sound.

"We have a kind of an understanding of what migraine is based on a certain set of symptoms," says Schreiber. "But I think that there are a lot of people who have migraines who do not necessarily follow the textbook."

Involvement of the sinuses is not part of the typical list and may lead many physicians to favor a sinus headache diagnosis.

"The way that doctors have been trained to diagnose migraine really does not incorporate any of these sinus-like symptoms," says Schreiber. "We discount those from a diagnostic perspective."