Clinical and socio-demographic characteristics of tension type headache in working population

Abstract

Tension-type headache (TTH) is the most common primary headache, whose clinical characteristics are described in detail, which resulted in definition of current diagnostic criteria, given in International Classification of Headache Disorders- second edition. For the time being, there is an insufficient number of epidemiological studies on tension type headaches in our environment. The aim of this paper is to determine socio-demographic and clinical characteristics in employed that suffer from TTH. The research has been conducted using General questioner and Questioner about characteristics of headaches on sample of 1022 employed people age 20 to 65. According to our research, 51.8 % of employed people that suffer from tension-type headache has rare episodic, 44.2% frequent episodic, and 4% chronic TTH. Among those that suffer from chronic TTH there was not a single person that belonged to the youngest age group (20-30), while 66.7% belonged to the group with patients who were between 41-50 years of age. In our research, prevalence of rare and frequent episodic tension-type headache grew beginning with the youngest group, culminating with middle group (41-50 years), and then it showed tendency to subside. Among patients with TTH significant percentage of patients are smokers, when it comes to marital status, there is a significant percentage of the divorced, and very often we find presence of this type of headache in their relatives, as well as presence of some other chronic disease. In our research there is prevalence among women, and the ratio is 5:3. Questioner about characteristics of a headache gave us answers characteristic for this particular group. Mental strain and fatigue have been reported as the most common triggers in connection to TTH. TTH is a very common headache type in working population, participating in this research. All of them filled the questioner at their place of work and are considered to be conditionally healthy. Active search for those suffering from TTH and a timely and proper health care can improve patient's health and lower economic cost due to headache.