Clinical profile and final diagnoses of hospitalized patients with a chief complaint of headache, an experience from a headache tertiary center in Iran.

BACKGROUND: Headache is a common neurological disorder that reduces the quality of life of millions of people globally. It is usually treated on an outpatient basis, but in a few particular conditions, the patient needs hospitalization. Analyzing the headache profiles of headache-related hospitalizations can provide decision-makers with valuable information for better headache treatment.

METHODS: This prospective study aimed to analyze demographic information and clinical profiles of the patients hospitalized due to headache complaints at the Neurology ward of Sina Hospital between October 2022 and August 2024. Independent sample t-test and Welch's t-test were used to compare subgroups of patients, and the Mann-Kendall test was adopted to analyze the time series trend in admissions.

RESULTS: Analyzing the data from 332 patients showed that the number of hospitalized patients increased monotonically during the study period. The patients diagnosed with secondary headaches were the largest group, followed by the patients with primary headaches and cranial neuropathies/facial pains. In all these categories, the female-to-male ratio was greater than one. Chronic migraine and medication-overuse headaches were the most common diagnoses among the primary and secondary headaches, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that women are more frequently hospitalized due to headaches than men. Most of the patients were diagnosed with secondary headaches due to the more challenging nature of this category.