11:47 AM
Anonymous
Traveling from A to B is a headache for many people, whether it's by train, plane or automobile.
But the pain is apparently rather more acute when travelling by air for some, researchers have said.
They argue that 'airplane headache,' a form of pain that flares up during landing, should get more recognition in the medical world.
The head pain, which can be characterised by its severity and position on one side of the head and near the eye, was first reported in medical literature in 2004, with several dozen more cases documented in the following years.
Now, Italian researchers are suggesting that the ailment should be considered a new subtype of headache, putting forward a list of criteria doctors can use to diagnose it.
Lead researcher Federico Mainardi, of Giovanni e Paolo Hospital in Venice, called it 'a recently described headache disorder that appears exclusively in relation to airplane flights, in particular during the landing phase.'
A group of 75 people with symptoms suggestive of airplane headache fitted the features of past cases - severe pain on one side of the head that was usually limited to the time the plane was landing.
The pain was almost always short-lived, at less than 30 minutes for 96 per cent of the people.
'Is (airplane headache) a unique disorder? I think it is.
But others might disagree,' said R. Allan Purdy, a neurologist and professor at Dalhousie Medical School in Halifax, Canada, who wrote an editorial on the report.
'Nobody knows what causes it. Nobody knows how many people have it. Nobody knows what treatments work,' he added, but noted that classifying it as a distinct disorder would allow it to be studied more directly.
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