engleski

Headache epidemiological studies in Croatia: a systematic review

Introduction: Recently, we have witnessed the growth of publishing activity in the research of headaches. Despite numerous scientific studies, researchers gathered in the Global Headache Campaign point out that the extent and scale of headaches in the population and the conse- quent burdens are still underestimated. Objectives: The main aim of this systematic review was to do an update on studies on primary headache epide- miology in Croatia. Methods: A literature search was performed with PubMed using the expressions “migraine epidemiology”, “headache epidemiology” and “migraine prevalence” or “headache prevalence” for Croatia. Only studies published as original scientific papers from 1992 to 2020 in English or Croatian were considered. A systematic search of the PubMed identified 8 studies reporting the prevalence, inci- dence and/or frequency of migraine, tension-type head- ache, or chronic headache among children, adolescent and adults in Croatia. The information extracted was the region of origin, year of publication, sample characteristics and the prevalence estimates for headache, migraine, tension-type headache, and chronic headache. Results: Headache epidemiology has been reported in 8 studies conducted since 1999 to 2015: seven studies reported cross- sectional survey, four of them conducted epidemiological population-based survey. Four studies reported about headaches among children and youth (age range 11–18), headache prevalence among high school students (migraine: 16.5%>17% for girls and 8.1%>11.8% for boys ; TTH: 18.4%>40.6% for girls and 13.4%>35.7% for boys), headache characteristic, therapy, self-reported causes of headaches, absenteeism from school and quality of life. Those studies were performed on a representative sample of the whole population within a certain age range in ten cities of the Republic of Croatia, a mix of urban, suburban and rural settings, using self-structured questionnaires, and diagnoses were made according to ICHD-II or the earlier ICHD-I or/and Lipton criteria. Four studies reported about headaches among adults (age range 15–65) ; two were population-based, “face-to-face, door-to-door” epidemiological survey reported: 65.2% headache screen-positive responders (13.92% migraine and 25.5% TTH), and the prevalence of migraine (1-year prevalence: 20.2% and life-time prevalence: 22.9%) in the adult residents of Bakar. One study reported the 1-year prevalence of chronic headache (2.4%). Conclusion: There is a lack of population- based studies of headache disorders in Croatia. There are major methodological differences and variable quality among the published studies.

primary headaches ; epidemiology ; Croatia

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