Epidemiologic and Clinical Characteristics of Migraine and Tension-Type Headaches among Hospitals Staffs of Shiraz (Iran)

Abstract- Headache is a common symptom that constitutes a major health problem to all countries in the world. This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence of migraine and tension-type headaches(TTH), its associated occupational risk factors among Shiraz hospitals staffs, and to report on clinical characteristics of migraine and TTH with using the International Headache Society (IHS) diagnosis criteria. A random sam-ple of 1023 staffs constituting a 20 % sample of the hospitals staff population was selected. Sampling method was categorical random sampling. Within each group sampling was carried out systematically. Data were col-lected by screening questionnaire followed by clinical interviews, general physical and neurological examina-tion, and diagnostic criteria of IHS. Prevalence of migraine, TTH and coexisting migraine and TTH were es-timated as 11.2 % (115 cases), 19.5 % (199 subjects) and 3.2 % (33 subjects) respectively. In this study, clini-cal characteristics of headache including type, site, number, intensity,concomitant symptom of headaches had been surveyed. TTH and migraine headaches were significantly associated with self reported abnormal sleep pattern and female gender (P < 0.001). Also TTH was negatively associated with total 24hr duration of sleep and history of involvement in second job significantly (P<0.026). The average of prevalence of mi-graine and TTH were lower than their counter parts in western countries but higher than previous studie