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SYNOPSIS The prevalence of migraine and cluster headache was investigated in a well‐defined homogeneous non‐hospital population of 9,803 18‐year‐old men from east central Sweden. The occurrence of headache was recorded by means of a questionnaire technique which proved to have a high degree of reliability as shown in personal interviews with a randomly chosen series of more than one‐fifth of the subjects. Personal interviews were held in all subjects. Personal interviews were held in all suspected cases of cluster headache. Recurrent headache occurred in 4.4% of the cases: migraine in 1.7%; cluster headache in 0.09%; other, non‐migrainous headache (MNH) in 2.6%. The majority of subjects had relatively frequent headaches, but only 43% of the migraine and 32% of the MNH subjects had sought medical advice for their complaint. Daily or almost daily consumption of analgetics was reported by 14% of the migraine and 11% of the NMH subjects. Ergotamine tartrate had been used by 15% of those suffering from migraine.Only 4 of the 9 subjects with cluster headache had been to a doctor on account of their headache, and only in one of them had a correct diagnosis been made. One subject had primary chronic symptoms, the remainder suffered periodically from cluster headache. Three subjects had symptoms since the age of 8‐9 years.
Ekbom et al. (Wed,) studied this question.