Headache as symptom of intracranial hemorrhage.

The most important signs of danger of a headache patient include exceptionally intense or acute headache, transient loss or progressive impairment of consciousness, and neurological deficit symptoms. These patients are referred to an urgent assessment by a physician. Computed tomography scanning of the head is carried out in the case of suspected hemorrhage of a headache patient. Routine diagnosis employing cerebrospinal fluid analysis can be abandoned when excluding subarachnoid hemorrhage in a patient with headache symptoms, if blood is with certainty not observed in the CT scan of the head and no more than six hours have passed after the onset of the symptom. If subarachnoid hemorrhage is detected, cerebral CT angiography will be performed at the same time and a neurosurgeon consulted about the need of operative treatment.