Abstract

Background: Chronic daily headache is not a specific headache type, but a syndrome that includes various primary and secondary headaches. It affects approximately 3-5% of the population. Females are affected 2 to 3 times more often than man. The present study is of Chronic Daily Headache & it’s subtypes distribution according to age & sex.

Material & Methods: This cross sectional study was done in Out Patient Department (OPD) of Mahatma Gandhi Hospital attached to Mahatma Gandhi Medical University, Jaipur located in North India providing secondary/tertiary medical care. Consecutive patients with chronic daily headache (CDH) attending the neurology and medicine Out Patient Department between September 2016 to September 2017 were enrolled for the study.

Results: The present study showed that the maximum number of the patients (65%) were seen in the age group of 21-40 years and mean age of CDH patients was 34.21±11.82 years. It is seen that out of 200 patients, 120(60%) patients had Chronic Migraine (CM), 80 (40%) patients had Chronic Tension Type Headache (CTTH), 78 patients had Medication Overuse Headache and no one had Hemicrania Continua or New Daily Persistent Headache. Mean age of CM patients was lower (32.23±11.49) as compared to mean age of CTTH patients (37.16±11.76), this difference was statistically significant (P=0.0036**). Sex wise distribution of the cases, female was 153 (76.5%) and 47 (23.5) were males.

Conclusion: Chronic daily headache frequency & its sub type CM & CTTH are higher in females as compared to males. In females, CM is more common than CTTH & in males, CTTH is more common than CM. CTTH affects at a higher age as compared to CM. Female to male ratio is higher in CM (5.3:1) as compared to CTTH (1.9:1).

Keywords: Chronic Daily Headache, Chronic Migraine, Chronic Tension Type Headache, New Daily Persistent Headache.