| Abstrakt: |
Background: Headache is highly prevalent among medical students and migraine is the leading entity in them. There are many ancillary symptoms along with headache in migraine patients that hamper the quality of life in them. Our study aims at identification of prevalence, clinical features, triggers, severity of headache and knowledge regarding their headache among different batch students of a medical college. Material and Method: All the students of a medical college, year wise were given the migraine questionnaire which contained 31 questions regarding headache. Those who have headache were asked to tick the relevant features. Out of them, students who met the criteria for migraine based on IHS ICHD 2 criteria were included in the study and others were excluded. The frequency of headaches among different batches (year of study), clinical characteristics and knowledge regarding their headache were tabulated and analyzed. Descriptive statistics were presented in the form of mean ± standard deviation, frequencies and percentages. Statistical analysis was done by using Microsoft excel 2007. Results: Out of 736 students, 37.2% had chronic headache while 26.7% met the diagnostic criteria for migraine. The prevalence of migraine among females and males was 35.4% and 15.5% respectively. The severity, duration and disability is much higher in females and the prevalence of menstrual migraine is 6.2%. Various types noted, were migraine without aura in 67.6%, migraine with aura in 21.8%, chronic migraine in 16.7%, probable migraine in 10.6% and status migrainosus in 9.6%. The most common aura is flashes of light, the most common prodrome is irritability and the most common trigger is lack of sleep. 77% had unilateral headache and the commonest site is temple region. 77% had relief by sleeping in a dark room, 69.1% used medications, 12% had taken prophylaxes for their headache at least once and only 52% know that they have migraine. Conclusion: Migraine is highly prevalent among medical students, with females being more affected than males. There is a need to increase the knowledge about the diagnosis and use of prophylaxes to reduce the substantial burden, the disease carries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
