Pain characteristics of painful ophthalmoplegia (the Tolosa-Hunt syndrome).

Pain characteristics of the Tolosa-Hunt syndrome were abstracted from the observations of five patients with repeated incidents of painful ophthalmoplegia. The pain was experienced either as pressure behind the ophthalmoplegic eye or as boring pain in one orbital region, fluctuating in intensity, sometimes worsening to knife stab-like pain in the eye. The unilateral pain did not shift side during a solitary incident of painful ophthalmoplegia and was never completely absent. The pain was increased when the eyes were strained, when cold wind blew against the face, and when a change in the weather took place. It was accompanied by a feeling of swelling in the affected region, but not by nausea nor vomiting. Conventional headache drugs provided little relief. All cases experienced tenderness when pressure was applied to the ipsilateral supraorbital foramen. The pain was suggested to be related to an increased load on the impaired venous blood flow in the region of the superior orbital fissure.