It can be quite frightening to suddenly feel stabbing pain behind your eye.
Causes of Stabbing Pain Behind Your Eye
“Pain behind the eye can be from a number of causes,” says Dr. Ravish Patwardhan, MD, nationally-renowned neurosurgeon and founder of Comprehensive Neurosurgery Network LLC.
“The most important things to rule out are a tumor or aneurysm, which can usually be done by using an MRI scan with MR angiogram.”
Dr. Patwardhan also notes: “Other intrinsic problems with the eye can be determined by an eye doctor.
“Some conditions will exist without any of these findings, such as Tolosa-Hunt syndrome, diagnosed with the help of a neurologist.
“In either case, the proper healthcare professional will guide diagnosis and therapy.”
Next time you suffer stabbing pain behind the eye, what should you do?
This is probably NOT a rupturing aneurysm or a tumor.
Nevertheless, ongoing occurrences mean you should get this checked out.
If this nuisance is your only symptom (i.e., no visual disturbances, slurred speech, numbness in a limb, unsteady gait or one-sided weakness, dizziness or nausea), you should not lose sleep over this.
According to Dr. Patwardhan, the stabbing pain behind the eye is most likely just a benign headache in a nasty location, creating the illusion that it means a serious condition.
Even a mere tension headache or ice cream headache can cause considerable discomfort in this location.
Take it easy, relax, and to put your mind at ease, you may want to consider recording your incidents of severe pain behind an eye, so that next time it happens, you could refer to your documents and possibly say, “Hey, I had this 14 months ago and nothing came of it! So there’s no need to worry!”
As for Tolosa-Hunt syndrome, this indeed can cause pain around the eye, rather than what would be described as behind the eye.
However, key features of this neurological disorder include difficulty moving the eye or the eyelid, as well as a bulging eye.
Though a brain tumor can cause pain behind the eye, the longer the time passage without any additional symptoms that would be suspicious for a brain tumor, the more reassured you can be that there isn’t a cancer causing the problem.
Symptoms of a brain tumor include (no particular order) seizures, cognitive changes, one-sided weakness, clumsiness, nausea, vomiting, morning headaches, loss of vision in one or both eyes, blurry or double vision, tingling or numbness in the face, trouble with swallowing food, and even a bulging eye.
