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When people think of head pain, headaches and other related conditions often come to mind. However, facial pain is another type of head pain that can stem from a variety of issues, including oral infections, ulcers, toothaches, sinus infections, injury, shingles, and a skin abscess. Identifying the source of the pain is often a matter of where on your face it’s felt, the severity, and whether it moves to other parts of the body.
Another possibility for why you have facial pain may be due to neuralgia, an illness that affects your nerves. To find out if this is the cause of your pain, let’s find out more about this illness, its causes, and the types of illness you could be suffering from.
Residents of the West Midtown, Atlanta Georgia, area looking for relief from facial pain can find help with Dr. Shivan Amin and his team at Midtown ENT.
This is the term for nerve pain and can happen anywhere on the body when nerves are damaged or irritated. This can lead to a range of sensations, including mild pain, aching, burning pain, tingling, numbness, and involuntary cramping or twitching depending on the cause and where on your body the pain is coming from. In its most severe cases, the resulting pain can hurt enough to make using that part of your body difficult.
Neuralgia can present in the form of neuropathy (nerve damage), pressure on the nerve, and nerve injury. Some conditions can also affect the way nerves behave, which can cause neuralgia. These issues can stem from infections like shingles, which affect nerves, compression of nerves from inflammation, a tumor, blood vessels, bones, or ligaments, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. It can also happen because of some medications, like some prescribed for cancer, or fluoroquinolone antibiotics for infections.
This nerve problem can present itself throughout your body, such as postherpetic neuralgia which stems from shingles, glossopharyngeal neuralgia (which occurs in your throat), and intercostal neuralgia (which happens in your abdomen, chest, and rib cage).
Here are the types of neuralgia that we treat that can affect the face:
This is when the trigeminal nerve (the one used for facial and eye sensations as well as the chewing muscles) is damaged or irritated which can stem from dental problems, surgery, or may not have a well-understood cause.
This rare type of neuralgia is from problems with the occipital nerve, which goes from the topmost part of your spine and runs up to the back of the skull. It’s responsible for sensation in the scalp and, when irritated or pinched, causes headaches. In fact, it's also confused with migraines and other types of headaches.
Your face can hurt for many reasons, and if neuralgia is the cause, make an appointment with Dr. Amin and his team at Midtown ENT today to find the treatment that fits your needs.