Since completing his graduate medical education in emergency medicine, Zachary Lutsky, MD, has practiced emergency medicine throughout California. In the course of doing so, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has diagnosed and treated a wide variety of conditions, including severe headaches.
Among the most common reasons people go to the emergency room, headaches can be a sign of a serious underlying medical problem. For example, medical emergencies like strokes and encephalitis can give rise to headaches. However, most headaches aren’t caused by a serious medical condition.
How can patients differentiate between dangerous headaches requiring immediate medical attention and common headaches that do not? If a person experiences a sudden headache with uncharacteristically severe pain, perhaps the worst headache pain they’ve ever encountered, they should call 911 or go immediately to an emergency room, as this could be a sign of internal bleeding.
Headache symptoms that worsen over a 24-hour period should also prompt an individual to seek medical attention. Headaches with additional symptoms like trouble seeing or speaking, vomiting, neck stiffness, paralysis, and/or fever are also among those that should compel someone to seek immediate medical care.
Among the most common reasons people go to the emergency room, headaches can be a sign of a serious underlying medical problem. For example, medical emergencies like strokes and encephalitis can give rise to headaches. However, most headaches aren’t caused by a serious medical condition.
How can patients differentiate between dangerous headaches requiring immediate medical attention and common headaches that do not? If a person experiences a sudden headache with uncharacteristically severe pain, perhaps the worst headache pain they’ve ever encountered, they should call 911 or go immediately to an emergency room, as this could be a sign of internal bleeding.
Headache symptoms that worsen over a 24-hour period should also prompt an individual to seek medical attention. Headaches with additional symptoms like trouble seeing or speaking, vomiting, neck stiffness, paralysis, and/or fever are also among those that should compel someone to seek immediate medical care.
