Headache in Meniere's disease.

OBJECTIVE

We examined headache in 86 patients with severe or moderately severe Meniere's disease (MD) or with Meniere's syndrome (MS) chosen for intratympanic gentamicin treatment. Forty-five patients with vestibular neuronitis (VN) served as a control group.

METHODS

In addition to a clinical examination, the patients filled out a questionnaire concerning their headache.

RESULTS

Altogether 60 MD patients (70%) and 26 VN patients (58%) reported headache. Headache was severe in 35 MD patients (58%), moderate in 16 patients (27%) and slight in nine MD patients (15%), and as a whole more severe than that of the VN patients (P < 0.01). The MD patients exhibited significantly more occipital (P < 0.005) and neck headache (P < 0.005) than the VN patients. Analgesics had been used by 82%, antidepressants by 35%, sumatriptan by 13% and carbamazepine and/or amitriptyline by 12% of the MD patients suffering from headache. Pain relief was reported as good by 27%, satisfactory by 60%, poor by 5% of the MD patients and 8% could not rate the pain relief. In this study migraine was diagnosed in 5 MD patients.

CONCLUSION

It is concluded that MD is associated with headache that can be handicapping, and tricyclic antidepressants with pain alleviating medication is often needed to treat the headache in MD whereas sumatriptan did not alleviate the headache of the non-migraine patients.