The Relation Between Migraine, Typical Migraine Aura and "Visual Snow"

Objective To assess the relationship between the phenotype of the “visual snow” syndrome, comorbid migraine, and typical migraine aura on a clinical basis and using functional brain imaging. Background Patients with “visual snow” suffer from continuous TV‐static‐like tiny flickering dots in the enti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Headache 2014-06, Vol.54 (6), p.957-966
Main Authors: Schankin, Christoph J., Maniyar, Farooq H., Sprenger, Till, Chou, Denise E., Eller, Michael, Goadsby, Peter J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
[18F]-2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography
Adult
aura
Brain - diagnostic imaging
Comorbidity
Female
Headaches
Humans
Male
Migraine
Migraine Disorders - complications
Migraine Disorders - epidemiology
Migraine with Aura - complications
Migraine with Aura - epidemiology
Positron-Emission Tomography
Prevalence
Vision Disorders - complications
Vision Disorders - diagnostic imaging
visual snow
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Summary:Objective To assess the relationship between the phenotype of the “visual snow” syndrome, comorbid migraine, and typical migraine aura on a clinical basis and using functional brain imaging. Background Patients with “visual snow” suffer from continuous TV‐static‐like tiny flickering dots in the entire visual field. Most patients describe a syndrome with additional visual symptoms of the following categories: palinopsia (“afterimages” and “trailing”), entopic phenomena arising from the optic apparatus itself (floaters, blue field entoptic phenomenon, photopsia, self‐light of the eye), photophobia, nyctalopia (impaired night vision), as well as the non‐visual symptom tinnitus. The high prevalence of migraine and typical migraine aura in this population has led to the assumption that “visual snow” is caused by persistent migraine aura. Due to the lack of objective measures, alternative diagnoses are malingering or a psychogenic disorder. Methods (1) The prevalence of additional visual symptoms, tinnitus, and comorbid migraine as well as typical migraine aura was assessed in a prospective semi‐structured telephone interview of patients with “visual snow.” Correlations were calculated using standard statistics with P 
ISSN:0017-8748
1526-4610
DOI:10.1111/head.12378