Symptoms

Pain in the jaw can have many different causes. In addition to many joint and muscle complaints, the carotid artery can also cause pain there. If the carotid artery forms a bulge on one side that takes up space, nerve roots running nearby can be pinched off.

The blood, which can enter the artery wall through a tear, causes a kind of internal bruise. Usually a carotid dissection is caused by an accident or a blow. The nerves that supply the neck and jaw pass near the carotid artery and are therefore at risk of being pinched off by the bruise if the artery wall is dissected.

When a nerve root is compressed in this way, pain is not usually the primary cause, but the person affected feels numbness in the area supplied by the pinched nerve. However, since such a reason for pain in the jaw is very rare, it is difficult to detect. A much more common reason is tension in the jaw muscles due to stress.

However, dissection is by far the more dangerous cause. Blood clots preferentially form at the sites of the sacculation, which in the worst case scenario can enter the brain where a reduced supply of oxygen can trigger a stroke. It is therefore very important to distinguish between a dissection and simple muscle tension.

The carotid artery runs along the side of the neck and is divided into two main branches at the beginning of the lower jaw. One branch (the “A. carotis externa”) supplies the tongue, face, back of the head and ear with oxygen-rich blood. Pain that occurs in the carotid artery can (as described in more detail above) come from a narrowing, a sacculation or an inflammation of the vascular wall.

The affected person does not always have pain directly at the site of the constriction or sacculation. It is also possible that this pain will continue and the affected person will have pain in the area of the ear as a symptom. Many sufferers describe it as a feeling of “pain radiation” that can extend from the shoulder over the jaw to the head.Again, it is very difficult for the doctor to determine the reason for this pain radiation.

The affected person should therefore pay close attention to other symptoms that indicate a narrowing in the carotid artery. This can be dizziness and a painful pressure over the artery, for example. Headache is one of the most common symptoms in a wide variety of diseases and is therefore always difficult to assign directly to a disease as a symptom.

However, it occurs in the majority of sufferers who complain of pain in the carotid artery. In order to rule out other possible causes when a narrowing or bulging of the carotid artery is suspected, the tension of the neck muscles should be tested. This, in conjunction with tension and stress, is the much more common cause of occipital pain. But carotid stenosis or dissection can also cause pain radiating to the back of the head, since one of the two main branches of the carotid artery (A. carotis externa) supplies this area.