We have posted in the past about the connection between headaches and mild traumatic brain injury – it’s an important subject. Recently, at the 54th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Headache Society, Sylvia Lucas, MD, PhD, reported that new research has found a higher prevalence of headache among patients with mild traumatic brain injury versus patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury. “These findings should caution us not to underestimate seemingly milder head injuries and to take all brain trauma seriously,” said Dr. Lucas. The study noted that people with a history of headache prior to injury, as well as women had a higher risk for developing post-traumatic headache. In the general population, motor vehicle accidents were a frequent cause for post-traumatic headache, and in the military population blast exposure was the major cause.
The presence of headache remained high one year after injury for all the people studied, regardless of their level of post traumatic brain severity. The majority of the people in the study met International Classification of Headache Disorders, Second Edition, criteria for migraine or probable migraine….. Neurology Reviews August 2012