The
first speciality clinic in the country catering to the
needs of chronic headache patients was launched by the
Dept of Neurology, Jaslok Hospital in 1995. Headache
is one of commonest problems in medical practice, but
still, only a small percentage of headache sufferers
seek professional help; most of them resort to self-medication
with over-the-counter analgesics.Chronic headaches are
never taken seriously and are not considered a major
health problem.
Contrary to common notion, only a small
percentage of chronic headaches are due to serious underlying
organic causes like brain tumors. A majority of chronic
headaches are due to migraine. But even these benign
chronic headaches result in a lot of misery, paralyse
normal functioning and are often labelled as psychological
or something that you have to live with and for which
there is no specific treatment available !
Ideal Headache Management depends on
understanding the fact that headaches are of many varieties.
Each type of headache has a different cause and hence
a different line of treatment. Most headache sufferers
can be helped through a simple and effective treatment.
But still many of our patients continue to suffer in
silence without seeking professional help!
The understanding of these benign primary
headaches has advanced greatly over the past decade.
Researchers have now solved some of the mysteries about
these headaches. We know that virtually every type of
headache has a biologic basis that can be diagnosed
and effectively controlled.
It is for this reason that we have
started this Headache Clinic so that we can analyse
the headache type and try to provide a simple and effective
treatment plan, which will improve the functional quality
of life and hopefully give the patient freedom from
recurrent headaches.
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