Headaches due to vascular disorders.

The association between stroke and headache is complex, ranging from highly nonspecific, wherein headache is largely irrelevant to diagnosis and therapeutic management, to highly specific and even causative. In short, acute headache may accompany the acute stroke process, chronically complicate stroke, or, in rare instances, serve as the primary cause of stroke. With the first instance, the incidence of acute headache is highly dependent on the stroke sub-type and etiology. In this article, the headaches accompanying or causing acute stroke are addressed in some detail.