[Headache, does it cause a health care overload in primary health care? Urban area vs rural area medical visit].
OBJECTIVE
Headache causes an overload and a problem to out-patient neurology. There are few studies that quantify the overload that the headache causes in a primary health care out-patient clinic visit. The aim of the present study is to identify and quantify the real load that this disease supposes in two primary health care consultations, one located in a rural area and another in an urban area.


METHODS
A 6 month long observational and descritive study. The total number of patients seen, the number of patients seen for headache and their diagnostic classification were recorded.


RESULTS
A total of 6,014 visits were counted. Only 46 patients consulted due to headache (0,76%). Tensional headache was the most frequently diagnosed headache (43.48%) followed by migraine (23.91%).


CONCLUSIONS
Our study verifies that published by other authors and determines that, on the contrary to that which occurs in the neurology out-patient clinic, headache does not cause a daily work overload for the general practitioner. The scarce number of consultations for headache, with the diagnosis and management involved in this disease, makes it necessary to consider a multidisciplinary health care problem such as headache differently according to the health care level involved.
Medrano Martínez
V
V
Servicio de Neurología, Hospital General de Elda, Alicante, Spain. vmedrano714k@cv.gva.es
Esquembre
R
R
Genovés
A
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006261:Headache / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009819:Office Visits; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019035:Rural Health Services; D012424:Rural Population; D019037:Urban Health Services; D014505:Urban Population