Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 3/2009

Headaches – part two

Secondary headaches represent symptom of other disease. They may also signalize a serious and life-threatening disease. We need to think about them in the differential diagnosis. The most serious causes include stroke, brain tumors and inflammatory diseases of central nervous system. Headache with acute onset, growing intensity, vomiting and neurological deficit or mental changes require neurological examination, laboratory investigations and medical imaging.

Keywords: secondary headaches, classification, brain tumors, intracranial hemorrhage, medication overuse, substance withdrawal, disorders of neck.