Headache is one of the most common complaints
among patients presenting to an outpatient neurological
practice. The evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of
headache can be challenging even for the experienced
neurologist. The first step that a physician must keep in
mind when seeing the headache patient is to differentiate
primary headache and secondary headache, although the
latter is relatively small in number, but it needs thoughtful
investigation and sometimes emergent management.
After ruling out the secondary headache, the physician
should make a correct diagnosis of primary headache that
can be encountered in most clinical practices according to
the “The International Headache Society’s International
Classification of Headache Disorders 2nd Edition
(ICHD-2)”, and appropriate treatment.
In this article, the author review some of the essential
factors that are part of headache evaluation, warning signs
and investigation plan of secondary headache disorders.
Then I will address a brief review on the diagnosis of
primary headache disorders and treatment strategies of
the more common primary headache disorders focusing
on migraine, tension-type headache, and chronic daily
headache.