Brain, Vol. 122, No. 9, 1611-1612,
September 1999
© 1999 Oxford University Press
Editorial |
Chronic tension-type headache: where are we?
Institute of Neurology, The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, UK
Primary headache syndromes may generally be distinguished as being either episodic, such as typical migraine or cluster headache, or chronic, such as chronic tension-type headache (CTTH) or hemicrania continua. In truth it is chronic headache, and most particularly chronic daily headache (CDH) in its various forms, that gives the sub-speciality of headache a bad name. Daily headache in all its manifestations probably effects 5% of the population (Scher et al., 1998
; Castillo et al., 1999), of which about half is clear-cut, at least on clinical grounds, CTTH. If neurology is to take headache into the next century, as either necessity or interest dictate, then the common headache syndromes must be adequately understood and it is timely to think about daily headache.
It is on this background that we can greet the positive observations that Olesen's group
References