Headaches and Eye Pain

Frequently, we see patients who say they have a pain in their eyeball. Certainly, there are many occasions in which eyes can hurt due to primarily eye-related issues, with diagnoses like inflammation in the eye. However, sometimes, there is no specific eyeball related issue that causes the pain. These patients will often complain that they have a pain “behind” or “around” the eye. While we sympathize with these patients because they definitely have pain, sometimes we label this as a headache instead of “eye pain.” After all, most of the head is behind the eyeball! There is a long history of headache syndromes localizing discomfort to eyeballs. In fact, there are many artists who have headaches who draw images of the pain as centered around the eye. Unfortunately, sometimes all we can do for these people is complete an eye exam to ensure there is no eye problem and then have them evaluated by a neurologist or other headache expert.