Study of Primary Headache Disorders among Patients with Epilepsy

Résumé

Introduction: Headache is one of the common comorbidities among the patients with epilepsy which worsens quality of life of an epileptic patient. The link between headache and epilepsy has long been known. Primary headaches, especially migraine, share some common features with epilepsy. This study was to explore the patterns of primary headache disorders among the patients with epilepsy attending a tertiary care hospital. Methods & Materials: This cross-sectional descriptive type of observational study was conducted in the Department of Neurology of Mymensingh Medical College Hospital during a period of one year and six months from May 2020 to October 2021. Total 80 patients with clinically diagnosed cases of epilepsy with age more than 12 years of both male and female gender were taken as study population according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Informed written consent was ensured from participants or their legal guardians. A semi-structured case record form containing the necessary information including the frequency and patterns of headache disorders, types of epilepsy and socio-demographic characteristics were used for data collection. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 27.36 ± 10.18 (SD) years with a majority in the age group of 20 to 29 years 36.3%. Among the patients female was 57.5%. Most of the respondents belonged to middle and lowerincome group which was 92.5%. The frequency of primary headache disorders was 60.0%, among them most common headache pattern was tension-type headache 56.2% followed by migraine headache 39.6%. Among the peri-ictal headache postictal headache was the most common which was 43.75% of all the respondents. Conclusion: Frequency of primary headache disorders in epileptic patients was high in this study where tension type headache was most common 56.2%.