The Management of Non‐traumatic Headache in a University Hospital Emergency Room

SYNOPSIS One hundred twenty‐four consecutive records of adults presenting to a univerity hospital emergency room between February 1‐May 31, 1978 with the chief complaint of non‐traumatic headache were analyzed. Although the vast majority of these patients had benign problems, the charts revealed poor documentation of a data base sufficient to evaluate this complaint. Further, relatively few unreferred patients received followup care in the hospital's ambulatory care center. Although corroborating previous work on the benign nature of this problem as seen in emergency room settings, this study additionally documents major deficiencies in the use of an emergency room as a setting in which to manage this problem.