Editorial: Migraine – a suitable case for treatment? || FREE PAPER ||

Roger M.Pinder

‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands

Headache disorders are common, with a lifetime prevalence of over 90% in all populations where they have been measured. So common, in fact, that a Global Campaign to Reduce the Burden of Headache was launched in 2004 to educate health care providers, the general public, and national governments to recognize that headache disorders are not trivial, that effective treatments are available, and that the costs of treatment are small in comparison to lost productivity in the workplace (Steiner 2004). Thus, although headache rarely signals serious underlying disease, it is one of the most frequent causes for consulting family practitioners and neurologists – 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 respectively. In many countries, however, headache disorders are regarded as unimportant and self-limiting and not as proper disease entities. Allocation of health care resources is often minimal, despite the consensus conference of the American and International Headache Societies conclusion that migraine, for example, is under-diagnosed and under-treated throughout the world.