Table 1 Any patient may have several types of headache and facial pain concurrently and a considerable number of headache conditions are secondary to other conditions. Some of these are serious and should be identified (see Sect. 7), but in general these conditions are relatively rare and comprise <1% of the patients seen with a headache in primary health care

Acutely occurring headache

Subarachnoid haemorrhage among others

Hyperacute, severe headache ± neurological symptoms

7

Episodic headache

Tension-type headache

Pressing headache with no accompanying symptoms

4

Migraine ± aura

Pulsating headache, physical activity associated with aggravation of the condition. Accompanied by nausea, photo- and phonophobia

3

Cluster headache and others

Unilateral headache with ipsilateral autonomic facial symptoms

5

Trigeminal neuralgia

Unilateral, stabbing pain lasting a few seconds

8

Chronic headache

Medication overuse headache

Use of headache medication for more than 10–15 days/month

6

Chronic tension-type headache

Pressing headache with no accompanying symptoms or medication overuse

4

Increased intracranial pressure including cerebral tumours

Frequently with increasing intensity, frequently with nausea and neurological symptoms

7