Headache is among the leading causes of disability in the Western world. About 90 percent of people experience headaches during their lifetime. The most common primary forms (without known cause or structural damage) are tension headache and migraine.
The latter is the most disabling form of headache of vascular genesis: women are mostly affected, from puberty through menopause. It is characterized by recurrent attacks, which may last from 4 to 72 hours; the pain is most often lateralized and throbbing, of significant intensity, associated with nausea, vomiting, discomfort from light and noise, and is aggravated by physical exertion. Migraine patients complain of social, family, school, or work dysfunction that results in poor quality of life. A high frequency of attacks often leads to overuse of medications resulting in a lowered pain threshold and self-maintenance of symptoms.
More than 10 percent of migraineurs suffer from a chronic form, a condition defined by a recurrence of attacks of more than 15 days per month.
Migraine is a more prevalent condition in those with a family history of headaches. In addition to genetic factors, the causes of migraine are to be found in hormonal patterning, stress, and environmental and psychological factors that add up to it.
There are also secondary headaches, that is, headaches derived from the presence of other diseases or special clinical conditions that require differentiated diagnostic-therapeutic courses. For example, a headache secondary to hypertension will primarily require therapy aimed at returning blood pressure values to normal limits. Or a type of Headache with contributions from the cervical spine, and other muscular, neural tissues. Therapeutic interventions must, therefore, be individualized and managed with a multidimensional approach.
With this in mind, we believe it is essential to initiate the patient into knowledge about themselves, their headache, and the triggering factors that can be controlled with primarily nonpharmacological prevention work. Therefore, the treatment pathway integrates medical, psychological, nutritional and rehabilitation aspects: this is Studioerre’s project.
Which specialists make up the Headache team?
