Temporal migraine

Our Global Medical Institute center generally distinguishes between forms of migraine according to the starting point of your migraine pain. In fact, we focus on three categories of migraine: frontal migraines, occipital migraines and temporal migraines.

For each of them, it's very important that you can pinpoint the pain, and in particular the starting point of your pain, so that we can offer you a treatment that will soothe you and your migraine-related pain, and reduce or even eliminate the symptoms of your frontal, temporal or occipital migraine.

In some cases, an initial consultation can be carried out via teleconsultation from the comfort of your own home: Global Medical Institute's specialists will be able to explain to you whether your suffering can be alleviated by our minimally invasive approach.

In these few lines, we'd like to give you some information about temporal migraine, so that you can find out more.

Why is it important to locate the starting point of your pain? What is a temporal migraine? What treatments are available at Global Medical Institute?

This section will help you make a free and informed choice.

The importance of localizing temporal migraine pain

At our Global Medical Institute center, we make a point of informing each and every one of our patients about the importance of localizing their pain.

If you can locate the starting point of your pain expression, our surgeons will be able to help you treat your migraine pain, whether temporal, occipital or frontal.

At our Global Medical Institute center, we focus first and foremost on the starting point of the pain, before proposing any medical or surgical treatment.

Sometimes, an initial consultation can be carried out via teleconsultation from the comfort of your own home: Global Medical Institute's specialists will be able to explain whether your suffering can be relieved by our minimally invasive approach.

By focusing on the location of the pain, we increase our chances of being able to treat your symptoms. That's why it's important for you to be able to localize it.

It is important to get a precise definition of your migraine, but all our patients tend to get lost in the different types of migraines, denominations, definitions and so on.

Migraines are not easily defined, and there are many different types. Your neurologists are specialists in the classification and treatment of migraines. Our surgeons are specialized in treating the pain expression of your migraines.

The only important point to focus on is the location of the pain, in particular the point of pain onset. It's on the basis of this location that we can help you decide whether the pain is frontal, occipital or temporal.

If the starting point of the pain is consistent with the pinched nerve or vessels, if that's where the pain began: that’s where our doctors and surgeons can act. We decompress the nerve and free it from the structures that are trapping it: these structures can be vessels, muscles, tendons, etc.

What is a temporal migraine?

In the vast majority of cases, pain associated with a temporal migraine is located in the temples and/or the temporal and masseter muscles (muscles involved in mastication). Pain is usually felt in the morning, and is pulsatile. Patients can usually place a finger on the point which often corresponds to the pulsating artery on the temple.

Here again, consider the example of facial vascular pain. In fact, it can also be a temporal migraine, particularly if the pain is expressed in several unbearable attacks each day of brief duration (a few minutes) and is mainly localized in the temples. It is typically associated with episodic pain and watery eyes. It occurs in repeated attacks over periods of weeks to months. It is intense, starts abruptly and subsides spontaneously after 15 to 180 minutes.

It then spreads to the periorbital, temporal and malar regions, and is strictly unilateral, with the following symptoms: lacrimation, rhinorrhea, nasal congestion, sweating localized to the face, conjunctival injection, miosis (constriction of the pupil).

The appearance of the face is congestive in the painful area, and the eyelid may be edematous. Attacks recur every few hours. Several months or years may elapse between attacks.

What kind of pain do you feel when you suffer from temporal migraine?

Temporal pain can include the following (you may suffer from all or only some of these types of pain):

• Pain in the temples
• Pulsating pain along the temporal artery
• Pain in the jaw and muscles at the temples
• Pain that usually appears in the morning
• Tooth wear indicating grinding
• “Imploding” type of headache

The patient can indicate a specific point on the temple (or temples) that strikes with the heartbeat.

What treatments does Global Medical Institute offer for your temporal migraine?

For temporal pain or temporal migraine, we can diagnose your migraine, which can be relieved by local anesthetic or botulinum toxin infiltration.

As part of a minimally invasive surgical treatment to relieve the pain associated with your temporal migraines, the procedure lasts around 30 minutes under local anesthetic. The operation requires an incision of around 1 cm close to the ear, which is almost invisible. Recovery is immediate in most cases, with no sutures to remove.

Your normal activities can be resumed immediately, and your physical and sporting activities can be resumed a week later. We don't cut or burn the nerve, we decompress it, freeing it from the structures that “jam” it.