Headache in General Practice: Frequency, Management, and Results of Encounter

Table 6

Frequency (%) of the most common results of encounter (“diagnosis”) of patients with a headache in the German SESAM 2 study ( = 231) and the Dutch Transition Project ( = 8,050 patients; frequencies refer to = 10,023 episodes of care).

Result of encounter	SESAM 2	DTP
Upper respiratory tract infection	16.9	3.8
Migraine	12.1	5.9
Sinusitis acute/chronic	9.1	10.7
Syndromes cervical spine	9.1	2.4
Headache	6.5	27.1
Tension headache	4.8	12.0
Muscle pain/fibrositis	3.1	1.3
Concussion/other head injuries	3.0	1.4
Elevated blood pressure/hypertension	3.0	1.9
Other disease spinal column	2.6	0.3
Acute bronchitis/bronchiolitis	2.2	0.5
Acute tonsillitis	2.2	0.3
Hypotension	2.2	0.1
Neurotic/somatoform disorder	2.2	3.5^*
Neck symptom/complaint	1.7	5.7
Sinus symptom/complaint	1.7	0.8
Vertigo/dizziness	1.7	0.6
Influenza (without pneumonia)	0.9	1.0
Other disease neurological system	0.9	1.1
General weakness/tiredness	0.4	1.3
Anemia	0.4	0.4
Depressive disorder	0.4	0.7
Other viral infections	0.4	2.4
Adverse effect of medical agent	0	1.0
Refractive disorders	0	0.5
Other muscular injury	0	0.4
Other	12.5	12.6

^*Including acute stress reaction, work problems, feeling anxious/nervous/tense (0.7% each), other mental/psychological disorders (0.6%), hyperventilation, and hypochondriacal disorder (0.4% each).