What Causes Severe Headache During Sleep?
Please get a MRI Brain with contrast and MRI spine.Metastasis to rule out.
Detailed Answer:
Hi XXXXXXX Wong,
Thanks for being on Healthcaremagic.com again with some further details which are of diagnostic help.
Onset of severe headache during sleep is something very unlikely for a primary headache except when it is a 'hypnic headadche' but that appears unlikely in your case as it has no regular timing(hypnic headache usually occurs in morning hours and also called as alarm clock headache).
Rather,intracranial malignancy among the secondary causes is very specific to cause sleep onset of headache and that too of intense severity.Keeping this important point of history in consideration,I suggest you to get one 'Magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) of Brain and spine with contrast'-so as to look for an intracranial pathology and spinal(specially neck or cervical spine,as you are having neck symptoms also) involvement,if any.By this,I don't mean to say that you are having a brain cancer or brain metastasis but it's just that when we have a strong point in history,we have to rule it out.
Please follow-up with MRI report.Also,please get a funduscopic examination done by an ophthalmologist to look for raised intracranial pressure.
Waiting for your follow-up.
Dr.Ajay Panwar,
MD,DM(Neurology)