An introduction to headache classification

Health care providers spend a lot of time with headache patients, where there is worry over secondary causes for headache. But the great majority of time is spent managing patients with primary headache; that, is dysfunction of the pain system in the head itself, such as migraine, and all its presentations. The release of the International Classification of Headache Disorders in 1988 (updated in 2004) was a major advance in headache medicine and neurology, fostering an enormous increase in clinical study, from which treatment decisions are now made and patients benefit. It is worthwhile for pain medicine practitioners to have some familiarity with headache classification and in particular with the clinical criteria for the diagnosis of various primary headache disorders. It must be appreciated that the criteria being more suited for research purposes are relatively strict and the license of clinical practice is less so.

Keywords: Headache, Headache classification, Migraine, Chronic daily headache