Handbook of Headache

Headache disorders are one of the most common disorders of the nervous system. They are pandemic and, in many cases, they can be recurrent and can accompany the patient for the whole life. These disorders impose a substantial burden on headache sufferers, on their families and on society itself; the individual impact is measured by the frequency and severity of attacks, while the societal burden is measured in terms of loss of activity at work or school, as well as of costs for the national health systems. As a matter of facts, headaches are in the top ten -  and possibly in the top five -  causes of disability worldwide: they are therefore extraordinarily common.

Population-based studies have so far mostly focused on migraine, which, even if most frequently studied , is not the most common headache disorder. Other types of headache, such as the more prevalent TTH and sub-typesof the more disabling chronic daily headache, have for the moment received less attention and need to be better investigated.    

This book will provide a useful tool to a wide medical population, who is required  specific skills to diagnose and manage these frequent and often disabling disorders. Furthermore, for medical students it could also represents a compendium focused on a topich to which they are usually introduced through multidisciplinary university programs.