Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffHorner syndrome is caused by damage to the sympathetic nerves of your face and eyes. Sympathetic nerves control your body's circulation and perspiration.
Sympathetic nerves in your face don't pass directly from your brain to your face. Instead, they start in an area of your brain known as the hypothalamus, travel through the brainstem and then down your spinal cord to enter your chest. From your chest, they go back up your neck, next to the main arteries that deliver blood to your head (carotid arteries), into your skull and then to your eyes. If the nerves are injured at any point along this route, Horner syndrome can result. Signs and symptoms of Horner syndrome usually occur on only one the side of your face because separate sympathetic nerves control each side.
Conditions that can damage the sympathetic nerve fibers and cause Horner syndrome include:
- Stroke
- Tumor
- Spinal cord injury
- Syringomyelia — a condition in which a fluid-filled cyst (syrinx) develops within your spinal cord
- A tear in the inner lining of one of your carotid arteries (carotid artery dissection)
- Cluster or migraine headaches
- An injury to a baby during birth
Although Horner syndrome may be a sign of one of these conditions, in some situations, a specific cause can't be found. This is known as idiopathic Horner syndrome.
- Kedar S, et al. Horner's syndrome. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Feb. 4, 2009.
- Riordan-Eva P, et al. Neuro-ophthalmology. In: Riordan-Eva P, et al. Vaughan & Asbury's General Ophthalmology. 17th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill; 2004. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=3091826&searchStr=horner's+syndrome. Accessed Feb. 4, 2009.
- Ropper AH, et al. Disorders of ocular movement and pupillary function. In: Ropper AH, et al. Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology. 8th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill; 2005. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=969125&searchStr=horner's+syndrome. Accessed Feb. 4, 2009.
- Birinyi F, et al. Ophthalmologic conditions. In: Knoop KJ, et al. Atlas of Emergency Medicine. 2nd ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill; 2002. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=787476&searchStr=horner's+syndrome. Accessed Feb. 4, 2009.
- Mahoney NR, et al. Pediatric Horner syndrome: Etiologies and roles of imaging and urine studies to detect neuroblastoma and other responsible mass lesions. American Journal of Ophthalmology. 2006;142:651.
- Braverman RS. Eye. In: Hey WW, et al. Current Diagnosis & Treatment: Pediatrics, 19th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill; 2009. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=3401185&searchStr=horner's+syndrome. Accessed Feb. 4, 2009.
