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Chronic headache often persists in the elderly
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Chronic daily headaches may be more protracted in the elderly than in other age groups, results of a 13-year study suggest.
In a large study conducted in 1993, Dr. Shuu-Jiun Wang, of Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, Taiwan, and colleagues found that 3.9 percent of elderly subjects suffered chronic daily headaches.
In follow up evaluations conducted in 1995 and 1997, they found two-thirds of these elderly subjects with chronic daily headache continued having headaches daily.
To assess the long-term outcome, the researchers established a cohort of 60 elderly chronic daily headache sufferers and interviewed the 26 survivors again in 2006, when they were 82.7 years old, on average.
The average number of headache days per month was 8.4 in 2006. Overall, nine individuals (35 percent) reported no headache in the past year, while seven elderly patients (27 percent) had persistent chronic daily headache.
All the patients with chronic daily headache had the condition at the earlier time points.
"Early treatment is indicated in elderly subjects with chronic daily headache," Wang told Reuters Health. "We are going to do survival analyses to investigate the impact of chronic daily headache on mortality in the elderly," the researcher noted.
SOURCE: Cephalalgia, October 2008.
Reuters Health