M‐L. Honkasalo1, Jaakko Kaprio1, Kauko Heikkilä1, M Sillanpää2, Markku Koskenvuo2
1Dept. of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland.
2Department of Public Health, University of Turku, Finland
Tóm tắt
SYNOPSISA population‐based epidemiological study of the prevalence of headache in a sample of 24,682 adults was carried out in Finland. Enquiries were made concerning the frequency of headache, migraine and characteristics of headache attacks in a questionnaire survey in 1981. Headache was classified as migraine, and headache without migrainous features. Possible somatic causes of headache were excluded by record‐linkage with three nation‐wide medical registries.The prevalence of both headache types depended on age and gender. Among women the overall prevalence of migraine was 10.1% with a maximum of 11.5% in the 40‐49 age group. The prevalence rate among men was 2.5% and the female/male gender ratio was 4.0. Women with migraine had an average of 52.5 headache occasions during a year and men with migraine 61 headache occasions per year. At the individual level, headache without migrainous features was least invalidating. There were only 16.5 headache occasions a year among women and 11.5 among men. However, from a population perspective headache without migrainous features accounted for 46.5% of all headache occasions among women and for 60.8% among men. Thus, from the public health viewpoint, studies of “non‐clinical” headache, e.g. headache without migrainous features should be emphasized.
