An emerging problem in clinical practice: how to treat chronic headache patients

Excerpt

In this issue, an interesting article by Farinelli and co-workers [1] debates an important emerging and not yet resolved problem: how to treat the chronic headaches complicated by medication overuse. Headache is the most common neurological disease in clinical practice. In Europe, this affects about 51% of the population, of which 31% are tension-type headache and 14% are migraine sufferers; 2% of these patients become chronic sufferers, more than 15/day/month, and chronic daily headache (CDH). 4–5% of general population suffers from a chronic form (CDH), with prevalence between 1.7 and 2.1% in men and between 2.8 and 6.8% in women [2]; within this group of patients in the US general population ranges around 1.3–2% of chronic migraine (CM). …