Causes of acute and chronic headaches in adult patients

Acute headaches in adults. Patients with a first-time acute headache or a recent change in the nature of the headache will require a more thorough examination to identify possible secondary causes than patients with persistent chronic headaches. Often, newly diagnosed headache is caused by acute viral infections or injuries.

Headaches that are addressed to the emergency department (SNP) can be both acute and persistent, chronic. In most cases, headaches of nontraumatic etiology in the SNPs are primary. As part of a prospective study, the final diagnoses of all patients delivered to the SNP with the main complaints of a headache of a non-traumatic etiology that lasted more than 11 months were analyzed.

The most common diagnosis was migraine. Organic changes were diagnosed mainly in elderly patients.

According to the Hospital for the provision of outpatient medical care to the population, headache associated with diseases such as meningitis, encephalitis, cerebral circulation disorders, bleeding, aneurysm, glaucoma, increased intracranial pressure, giant cell / temporal arteritis and hypertensive encephalopathy, is non-traumatic etiology among patients with SNPs, in people over 50 years old, they make up 6%, and in patients over 75 years old – 11%.

Chronic adult headaches

The most common types of chronic headaches are tension headaches and migraines. If patients in this group often use analgesics, they may develop another type of headache, called a drug-induced (analgesic) -induced headache. Post-traumatic and beam headaches are less common.

Final diagnoses in emergency room patients with headaches of non-traumatic etiology:

1. Migraine: 41%
2. Tick of a headache is not established: 37%
3. Infections: 10%
4. Bundle pain tension: 4%
5. Beaming headache: 2%
6. Stroke, transient ischemic attack, intracranial hemorrhage: 2%
7. Headache after lumbar puncture: 2%
8. Benign intracranial hypertension (brain pseudotumor): 1%
9. Glaucoma: 1%