RT Book, Section A1 Smetana, Gerald W. A2 Bajwa, Zahid H. A2 Wootton, R. Joshua A2 Warfield, Carol A. SR Print(0) ID 1131932536 T1 Historical Features in Primary Headache Syndromes T2 Principles and Practice of Pain Medicine, 3e YR 2016 FD 2016 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 9780071766838 LK neurology.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1131932536 RD 2024/10/04 AB Headache is a nearly universal symptom. As an example of the prevalence of headache, a study of 410 patients who had visited a primary care internal medicine practice found that headache was the fourth most common symptom and was exceeded only by fatigue, back pain, and dyspnea.1 In an early study of more than 1 million unselected individuals from the general population, headache was the single most common current symptom and was reported by 39% of men and 56% of women.2 As physicians, nearly all of us have had personal experience with headache and can understand the headache descriptions that we hear from our patients. Chapter 27 elegantly details the prevalence of this common symptom and of common primary headache syndromes. Primary headaches are those without a pathologic basis.3–5 These are benign recurring headaches of unknown cause. The most common primary headache syndromes are migraine, tension-type headache (TTH), and cluster headache. Secondary headaches are caused by an underlying pathologic cause.