Headaches
Recurring headache may be the most
common reason for seeking medical care. Headaches account for
about 10 million visits to physicians' offices each
year—not counting visits to nonphysicians,
chiropractors, hypnotists, or other health care providers who
offer headache relief. But as common as the condition is, it
is still in many respects a mystery. Researchers aren't
exactly sure what causes headaches or which people are more
susceptible, though they believe a biological predisposition
may be responsible and that overuse of pain-relievers and
caffeine can make them worse. Likewise, doctors can't always
tell what kind of headache an individual has and therefore
what kind of medicine would be best.
You've probably heard headaches
described in various ways; terms often used include tension
headache, muscle contraction headache, stress headache, daily
chronic headache, migraine headache, and cluster headache.
Specialists also deal with posttraumatic headache and
disease-related headache.
Type of Headaches
In 1988, the International Headache
Society (IHS) developed the criteria most often used to
differentiate these headaches from one another. Physicians
from around the world took two years to outline a
classification system. It is based on clinical features of
the headache, including:
-
Number of attacks per
month
-
Length of time per
attack
-
Pain characteristics
-
Accompanying symptoms
With such an elaborate system, it seems
that diagnosing your headache would be easy. Not so! The
reason it's sometimes hard for a health care provider to
diagnose the type of headache you have is that different
kinds often have similar symptoms. Even the Headache Society
admits that its criteria have substantial diagnostic
overlap.
Cluster headache, posttraumatic
headache, and disease-related headache are not as confusing
as the others, because they have more distinct
characteristics. Diagnosis is often more difficult, when it
comes to tension headache (which is the same as muscle
contraction and stress headache), daily chronic headache, and
migraine.
Next :
Type of Headaches
-Migraines
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