POST CRANIOTOMY SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS?

[TOM765]

What are the signs and symptoms of post craniotomy headache?  Some schools of thought say that it can be like that of a tension headache, migrainous and cluster like?

Thanks


This discussion is related to Craniectomy gone bad.

[TOM765]

Thanks for that advice the one thing I will remember after my surgery is that I could barely open my mouth.  It was asumed that this would get better with time!  

For the last 5 years i've experienced this type of pain.

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Pulsating tightness
Strong persistent tingling in the right hand side of my face.
Spontaneous electric shocks in the right hand side of my face also present at times are a spontaneous piercing and boring pain.  This pain can also be of a burning type.  Constant piercing and boring pain that varies in its intensity and can be at the same time accompanied by electric shocks.  Piercing and boring can be spontaneous.

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I find that this pain is substanially worse in general when I do lots of close up work & reading.  Five years on I am now seeing a physio and you then really realise how important a good posture plays!  Basically i've had a lot of issues with the chewing muscles that unfortunately became destabilised since surgery, i've only just realised from my physio that my jaw is really stiff.  Having started physio exercises you really realise how out of kilter everything is on my surgery side you also realise that how the everyday things one does not only puts strain on your muscles but possibly everything else that is unfortunately disturbed in Neurosurgery.  The exercises really hurt and its not much wonder why i've had such bad pain the last 5 years!  I'm sure my nerves have picked on all these weird signals from my muscles hence this weird piercing, boring pain with tingling and electric shock pain.  I'm pretty confident that I felt no numbness after the surgery and hopefully a nerve hasn't been damaged.  I felt pain but my mouth could hardly move and I remember seeing my tmj wobbling around!

The pain has been bad and i'm pretty sure that having to compete against it has effected my eyesight i've learnt to simply wear some strong reading spectacles to stimulate my eyes to move.  Its hard to make your eyes converge and accommodate when the pain is at it height!  

It has really been a viscous cycle these last 5 years!  

I could be wrong here but pain after Neurosurgery seems to be a very neglected thing and what can go wrong on the surface should be just as important to consider just as assessing ones cognition.    

You might find these following papers interesting.  

Postcraniotomy Function of the Temporal Muscle in Skull Base
Surgery: Technical Note Based on a Preliminary Study
Amr Abdulazim,1 Andreas Filis,2 Pooyan Sadr-Eshkevari,3 Fried Schulte,4
Nora Sandu,5 and Bernhard Schaller5, 6

The long-term effect of craniotomy on temporalis muscle
function
Pedro A.S. Rocha-Filho, MD, PhD,a Fábio J.C. Fujarra, DDS,b José L.D. Gherpelli, MD, PhD,c
Getúlio D. Rabello, MD, PhD,d and José Tadeu T. de Siqueira, DDS, PhD,e São Paulo, Brazil

[Paderla Anitha, DNB]

Hello and hope you are doing well.

It depends, if the craniotomy site is infected, it can cause a localized headache. If there is evidence of meningitis or blockage to the flow of CSF, the headache could then be generalized and severe.

Hope this helped and do keep us posted.