Diagnosis and classification of headache.

Abstract

Headache is the most common neurologic complaint. Migraine is by far the most frequent headache type seen by office-based physicians.Migraine remains under-recognized, under-diagnosed, and therefore under-treated in everyday medical practice. With time severely restricted in primary care day-to-day practice, a user friendly approach to assessment of headaches and differentiation into the broad types of "worrisome headache," migraine, tension-type, and others is necessary. A consensus-based, practical, rapid, six essential-question screening technique is outlined.