Skip to main content
  • HEADACHE IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM
  • Open access
  • Published:

Primary headache in Emergency Department: prevalence, clinical features and therapeutical approach

Abstract

Headache is one of the most common reported complaints in the general adult population and it accounts for between 1% and 3% of admissions to an Emergency Department (ED). The overwhelming majority of patients who present to an ED with acute primary headache (PH) have migraine and very few of them receive a specific diagnosis and then an appropriate treatment. This is due, in part, to a low likelihood of emergency physicians diagnosing the type of PH, in turn due to lack of knowledge of the IHS criteria, and also the clinical condition of the patients (pain, border type of headache, etc.) In agreement with the literature, another interesting aspect of data emerging from our experience is that few of the ED PH patients are referred to headache clinics for diagnosis and treatment, especially if they present with high levels of disability. This attitude promotes the high–cost phenomenon of repeater patients that have already been admitted to the ED for the same reason in the past. This is statistically important because it involves about 10% of the population with PH.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. Mostardini.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cerbo, R., Villani, V., Bruti, G. et al. Primary headache in Emergency Department: prevalence, clinical features and therapeutical approach. J Headache Pain 6, 287–289 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10194-005-0210-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10194-005-0210-1

Key words