Prevalence of chronic headache in Croatia.
BACKGROUND
Chronic headache describes the presence of headache for >15 days per month on average for >3 months and fulfills the rest of the IHS criteria. The prevalence of chronic headache is within the range of 0.5-7.3% worldwide. The aim of this study was to determine the 1-year prevalence of chronic headache in adult Croatian population.


METHODS
The data were collected from a cross-sectional survey of an adult population (>18 years of age) sample. Randomly selected patients from the general population in four Croatian cities were asked to fulfill a self-completed questionnaire. The prevalence of chronic headache was calculated in the sample representing 3,383,769 Croatian adults.


RESULTS
The total sample included 1542 responders among which 616 were with headache. The 1-year prevalence of chronic headache was 2.4%, and 0.9% of responders declared having headache 30 days per month. According to these results, 81,192 adult inhabitants in Croatia suffer from chronic headache.


CONCLUSIONS
The prevalence of chronic headache in Croatia is comparable to other countries worldwide. These patients require special attention and should be offered multidisciplinary medical support.
Department of Neurology, Reference Center for Headaches of the Ministry of Health of Republic Croatia, University Hospital Sestre Milosrdnice, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia.
Vlasta
V
Vuković-Cvetković
Davor
D
Plavec
Arijana
A
Lovrenčić-Huzjan
D000328:Adult; D017523:Croatia / Q000453:epidemiology; D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D020773:Headache Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence