This practical book provides a handy reference for the doctor confronted with patients complaining of headache. Headache is one of the most common complaints seen in the outpatient or ambulatory care setting, and may be caused by a wide variety of conditions. This book clearly explains up-to-date headache epidemiology, impact, and pathogenesis, and walks the reader through the steps to evaluating and treating the patient presenting with primary or secondary headache disorders. Also included are reviews of common headache comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease and stroke, epilepsy, fibromyalgia and mood disturbance. Copious use of easy-to-understand figures, tables, and algorithms make this book a useful and practical tool in the clinic. Guidance on selecting diagnostic tests and specific treatment protocols are provided. Treatment recommendations are evidence-based with full referencing and include emerging therapies. Sections on evaluating and treating headaches in children, women during pregnancy, and the elderly complete this comprehensive reference. The likely readership will include the following: neurologists, general physicians, doctors in training, hospital pharmacists, primary care physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners.

This practical book provides a handy reference for the doctor confronted with patients complaining of headache. Headache is one of the most common complaints seen in the outpatient or ambulatory care setting, and may be caused by a wide variety of conditions. This book clearly explains up-to-date headache epidemiology, impact, and pathogenesis, and walks the reader through the steps to evaluating and treating the patient presenting with primary or secondary headache disorders. Also included are reviews of common headache comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease and stroke, epilepsy, fibromyalgia and mood disturbance. Copious use of easy-to-understand figures, tables, and algorithms make this book a useful and practical tool in the clinic. Guidance on selecting diagnostic tests and specific treatment protocols are provided. Treatment recommendations are evidence-based with full referencing and include emerging therapies. Sections on evaluating and treating headaches in children, women during pregnancy, and the elderly complete this comprehensive reference. The likely readership will include the following: neurologists, general physicians, doctors in training, hospital pharmacists, primary care physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners.

Unique case-based guide to generating diagnostic possibilities based on the patients' symptoms. Invaluable for psychiatrists and neurologists.

M. WILKINSON Patients with frequent or daily headaches pose a very difficult problem for the physician who has to treat them, particularly as many patients think that there should be a medicine or medicines which give them instant relief. In the search for the compound which would meet this very natural desire, many drugs have been manufactured and the temptation for the physician is either to increase the dose of a drug which seems to be, at any rate, partially effective, or to add one or more drugs to those which the patient is already taking. Although there have been some references to the dangers of overdosage of drugs for migraine in the past, it was not until relatively recently that it was recognized that drugs given for the relief of headache, if taken injudiciously, may themselves cause headache. The first drugs to be implicated in this way were ergotamine and phenazone. In the case of ergotamine tartrate, the dangers of ergotism were well known as this was a disorder which had been known and written about for many years. In the treatment of headache, fully blown ergotism is rare and in recent years has usually been due to self-medication in doses much greater than those prescribed although there are a few recorded cases where toxic amounts have been given.

Based on the breakthrough understanding that virtually all headaches are forms of migraine--because migraine is not a specific type of headache, but the built-in mechanism that causes headaches of all kinds, along with neck stiffness, sinus congestion, dizziness, and other problems--Dr. Buchholz's Heal Your Headache puts headache sufferers back in control of their lives with a simple, transforming program: Step 1: Avoid the "Quick Fix." Too often painkillers only make matters worse because of the crippling complication known as rebound. Step 2: Reduce Your Triggers. The crux of the program: a migraine diet that eliminates the foods that push headache sufferers over the top. Step 3: Raise Your Threshold. When diet and other lifestyle changes aren't enough, preventive medication can help stay the course. That's it: in three steps turn your headache problems around.

Fully-updated edition of this award-winning textbook, arranged by presenting complaints with full-color images throughout. For students, residents, and emergency physicians.