Prevalence of Headache Disorders, their Impact on the Daily Lifestyle of the Patients, and the Correlation of their Demographic and Clinical Features with Headache Impact Test 6

Author(s): Umar Farooque, Fahham Asghar, Muhammad Talha Liaquat, Bharat Pillai, Sohaib Shabih, Suchitra Muralidharan, Ramsha Aqeel, Muhammad Taimur, Khadijah Sajid, Omer Cheema, Sundas Karimi, Saurabh Kataria

Introduction: Headache disorders are common among people of all ethnic groups. Primary headache disorders include migraine, tension-type headache, cluster headache, and chronic daily headache syndrome. Secondary headaches include medication overuse headache. The aim of this study is to evaluate the prevalence of various types of headaches disorders, their impact on the daily lifestyle of the patients, and the correlation of their demographic and clinical features with Headache Impact Test 6 (HIT-6).

Materials and methods: This prospective study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital in Karachi for a period of six months. 198 patients who came in the outpatient (OPD) department and had a diagnosis of headache were included in this study irrespective of their age and gender. The demographic features, clinical features, and the final diagnoses made by the attending physician using the International Classification of Headache Disorders II (ICHD-II) were recorded. The impact of headaches on the daily lifestyle of the patients was determined by using a six-item HIT-6 questionnaire. For continuous variables, the means and standard deviations were calculated. Whereas for categorical data, frequencies and percentages were calculated. Effect modifiers like demographic and clinical features were controlled through stratification, Fischer’s exact test was used and a p-value of ≤0.05 was taken as significant.

Results: The mean age of the patients was 34.39±15.58 years. Age distribution showed 90 (45.45%) patients of eight to 30 years, 84 (42.42%) patients of 31-50 years, and 24 (12.12%) patients of 51-75 years of age. There were 69 (34.8%) male and 129 (65.2%) female patients. The unmarried patients were 81 (40.9%) and married patients were 117 (59.1%). The lower-class patients were 94 (47%), the working-class patients were 87 (43.9%), the middle-class patients were 15 (7.6%),