Principles & Practice of Pain Medicine > Part IV. Pain by Anatomic Location > A. Head and Neck > Chapter 18. Historical Features in Primary Headache Syndromes Gerald W. Smetana

Historical Features in Primary Headache Syndromes: Introduction

"Headache is a nearly universal symptom. As an example of the prevalence of headache, a study of 410 patients who had visited a primary care internal medicine practice found that headache was the fourth most common symptom and was exceeded only by fatigue, back pain, and dyspnea.¹ In an early study of over 1 million unselected individuals from the general population, headache was the single most common current symptom and was reported by 39% of men and 56% of women.² As physicians, nearly all of us have had personal experience with headache and can understand the headache descriptions that we hear from our patients. Chapter 17 elegantly details the prevalence of this common symptom and of common primary headache syndromes. Primary headaches are those without a pathologic basis.^3–5 These are benign recurring headaches of unknown cause. The most common primary headache syndromes are migraine, tension-type, and cluster headache. Secondary headaches are the result of an underlying pathologic cause...."