A computerized expert system for diagnosing primary headache based on International Classification of Headache Disorder (ICHD-II)

BACKGROUND: The authors developed a computerized program designed to diagnose primary headache based on international classification of headache disorders, 2nd edition (ICHD-II) criteria for use by physicians. METHODS: An appropriate questionnaire was designed according to the ICHD-II criteria for all types of primary headaches and the computerized system provided diagnosis based on the criteria. The software was tested by analyzing 80 patients, recruited from an outpatient headache clinic, affected by primary headache. Each patient with a unique card number was interviewed up to 15 minutes. At the end of each day, software and neurologist diagnoses were evaluated for each patient. RESULTS: Of 80 patients, the software was able to come up with correct results in 78 cases. The age of the patients ranged from 30 to 80 years old. Migraine headache accounted for 71 cases, five patients had tension type headache, and 2 had cluster headaches; all were correctly diagnosed by software. Two cases were not concordant with the neurologist's diagnosis. The neurologist diagnosed these two cases as "Medical overuse syndrome headache" and "cluster headache", which our software was not able to diagnosis them. CONCLUSIONS: This software permitted the diagnosis of more than 97% of the patients similar to the physician's. We hope this questionnaire and applying the software to diagnose headache based on ICHD could be of help to better the diagnosis of headaches.