It stands for “Short-lasting, Unilateral, Neuralgiform headache attacks with Conjunctival injection and Tearing Syndrome.

There are no criteria for people who suffer from SUNCTS. But people who suffer from Migraines are more likely to be affected. Sufferers are healthy people who experience the stabbing headache, and they have not been diagnosed with serious head injuries, although nerve damage is a significant factor.

This Syndrome is a debilitating problem that many sufferers have to deal with on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis.

The main symptoms of SUNCTS is “shooting” or “smacking” pains in the head usually concentrated in and around the temple region. These pains are as quick as an electric shock. They can come singularly at irregular intervals, or continuously. Most people suffer one or two attacks during a year, but severe sufferers can end up having in excess of 50 attacks an hour which then makes them unable to move or react to anything but the pain.

In particularly bad cases the sufferer may get swelling of the eye lids with problems ensuing with vision. In some cases their vision can be completely compromised which alone can be dangerous for obvious reasons such as the sufferer could be driving at the time of an attack.

What would the diagnostic criteria be?

1. Pain is stabbing and lasts for a fraction of a second. It can occur with a single “shock” of pain or several following each other.
2. It recurs at irregular intervals of hours to days.
3. Pain confined to the head and exclusively or predominantly felt in or around the temple area.
4. Diagnosis depends upon the exclusion of structural changes at the site of pain and in the distribution of the affected cranial nerve.

Are there treatments to combat the pain as in normal headaches?

There are various forms of medication on the market which either stop the pain completely or help reduce the severity of an attack. But not all sufferers can be helped. In these cases, an opiate based drug is usually the only form of medication. Even then the pain can be severe enough to make the sufferer bed-ridden.

The condition is completely incurable and inoperable.

Below is a quote from a sufferer who recently attended a Neurology Centre

I was requested by the professor treating my condition to attend a teaching seminar, at the Walton Centre for Neurology, for neurologists from around the country so that they may see, examine and question me relating to the condition. It was said by the professor that a practicing neurologist would be lucky to see such a case once in 10 years! None of the attending "experts" was able to diagnose the condition without the assistance of the professor.

This is because there are many very similar conditions for which it can easily be mistaken for; the most common being classic headache syndrome and trigeminal neuropathy. Treatment by drugs and operations are available to successfully treat these, and many more head pains. The etymology of this condition is such that treatment is very much hit and miss. It is totally inoperable and incurable.