What are headaches?

Headaches are a very common occurrence that causes pain in the head of the patient. Headaches can be divided into primary headaches that occur spontaneously and secondary headaches that are due to another underlying medical cause. Primary headaches include:

· chronic daily headache;

· cluster headache;

·       migraine headache; and

·       tension type headache.

Secondary headaches include:

·       brain abscess;

• brain tumours;
  cerebral aneurysm;
• dental pain - Headaches can be caused by dental abscesses, root canal disease, underbite, overbite and night time tooth grinding. Cavities also can cause headaches. The common denominator is an irritation of the powerful trigeminal nerve, which supplies teeth with sensitive nerve fibers. This can trigger the brain stem and the cortex of the brain to produce a severe, overpowering headache;
• dialysis headache – Headaches in the setting of hemodialysis for kidney failure can occur from too little sodium concentration in the dialysis fluid. Another mechanism of developing a headache in association with hemodialysis is when the blood pressure has significantly dropped about 4 hours after the start of hemodialysis;
• giant cell arteritis – This is a rheumatological disease where there is a strong association with polymyalgia rheumatica. Headaches are often associated with a condition, called temporal arteritis;

·       epidural hematoma;

·       hypertension;
hypoglycemia;

·       meningitis;

·       neck abnormalities – Neck abnormalities come in many different forms. There are inborn (congenital) neck abnormalities with malformations in the lower cervical spine area (6th and 7th vertebral bodies) or at the upper end of the cervical spine in the first and second vertebral body area. These abnormalities,arthritic changes and changes from trauma to the neck can lead to chronic neck pain;

·       postconcussion headache;

·       subdural hematoma;

·       temporomandibular joint disease; and

·       trigeminal neuralgia.