Authors: Shweta Ajay, B Ramakrishna Goud, Deepthi Narayan Shanbhag, Charles J Pallan, Priya Genevieve D'mello, Ryan Colaço, Sneha Jaganathan Andrade, Nidhin Varghese, Saji K John, Thomas Mathew
Introduction: The prevalence of primary headache disorders (PHDs) and their burden has been seldom studied in the rural community setting of a developing country. To study the prevalence of primary headache disorders and their burden in the rural community Material and Methods: A door to door survey was done in seven rural villages under Mugalur sub centre area, Sarjapura Primary Health Centre and Anekal taluk, Bangalore district, Karnataka State, south India, for finding the prevalence and burden of PHDs. Results: During the study period of three months, a total of 1255 people were screened in the seven villages. 13.1% (165/1255) of people suffered from PHDs. The population prevalence of migraine without aura was 8.84% (111/1255), tension type headache was 2.86% (36/1255) and chronic migraine was 1.43%(18/1255). The mean number of headache days for all the PHDs was 4.26 (±1.64) days. 66.1% of persons with headache reported minimal or infrequent impact of headache. Among various demographic variables, headache was significantly associated with the female gender and marital status. Conclusion: PHDs are prevalent in the rural communities of developing countries and need urgent attention of primary care physicians, community health departments, governmental agencies and policy makers. Keywords: Primary headache disorders, Migraine, Tension type headache, Chronic migraine, Rural population, Community study
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