Have Bleeding Gums, Pain In Back, Shoulder, Jaw And Scalp With Flaky Scalp. Worried About Temporal Arteritis

Posted on Sat, 3 Nov 2012

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Sat, 3 Nov 2012 Answered on

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 Last reviewed on

Question : Scalp pain with dry flaky scalp accompanied by back and shoulder pain, I also have bleeding gums and jaw pain (clicky jaw) and migraines. The last three are something that I have had for years. Worried about temporal arteritis after reading about it. Female 37 currently pregnant.

Answered by Dr. Biswajit Dash (9 hours later)

Hello,

Temporal arteritis (TA) is a serious and life threatening condition and I can very well understand your worries. But I don't think it may be temporal arteritis because of the fact that generally TA occurs after the age of 50 yrs (a very strong criteria). A recent onset headache in the temporal region is another important diagnostic criterion (but you say you are having those symptoms since years). Besides that other vague symptoms importantly visual disturbances accompany headache.

Pregnancy is associated with wide variety of symptoms including headaches, gum bleeding, muscular aches, hair and scalp changes, etc. Therefore it is possible that all your current symptoms may be associated with pregnancy.

You can consult your primary healthcare doctor / rheumatologist. He/she can evaluate you to relate your symptoms. You can go for a colour duplex of the temporal artery to exclude the disease if it's bothering you.

Hope I cleared your doubts to certain extent. Let me know if you have other enquiries.

Good luck

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Prasad