Citation

Lucas S, Ahn AH. Headache 2018; 58(6): 873-882.

Affiliation

Elli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USA .

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, American Headache Society; American Association for the Study of Headache, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/head.13311

PMID

29737529

Abstract

There are currently no accepted therapies for posttraumatic headache (PTH). In order to meet the urgent need for effective therapies for PTH, we must continue to address fundamental gaps in our understanding of the clinical course and impact of PTH. Here we examine the existing schema used to characterize the clinical characteristics of PTH, including the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD). There remain unresolved questions about whether to classify patients based on the extent of brain injury or on clinical symptom profiles. There also remain problematic issues of definition such as continuous headache, and chronic daily headache with features of "embedded" migraine-type within these headaches, which will need to be studied further. We make the case that a symptom-based classification is needed to begin an examination of these unresolved questions, and to establish clinically relevant endpoints for research and clinical trials for effective therapies.

© 2018 American Headache Society.

Language: en

Keywords

International Classification of Headache Disorders; posttraumatic headache; secondary headache disorders; traumatic brain injury