Migrainous headaches

OB/GYN News, July 1, 2002 by Sally Koch Kubetin

Migrainous headache--the diagnosis that describes patients who meet most but not all of the International Headache Society's strict diagnostic criteria for migraine--may afflict 3% of the population, based on the results of an epidemiologic study

By International Headache Society (IHS) criteria, patients are considered to have migrainous headache if their headache pain is unilateral and pulsating. Alternatively, they also meet diagnostic criteria for migrainous headache even if their headache pain is neither unilateral nor pulsating, so long as their head pain is associated with nausea or vomiting or sensitivity to light and sound, Dr. David Dodick said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.

Based upon responses of 30,000 people to the 300-question survey that was part of the American Migraine Study II (AMS-II), a large epidemiologic study, 13% of this large sample met rigorous IHS criteria for the diagnosis of migraine with or without aura. Another 3% met IHS criteria for migrainous headache.

Extrapolating from U.S. Census Bureau data, this equates to an estimated 5.8 million Americans with migrainous headache in addition to the 27.9 million with migraine, said Dr. Dodick of the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.