Résumé
Each minute, approximately six patients visit an emergency department (ED) in the United States with a chief complaint of headache. This results in approximately 300,000 visits annually and makes headache the fifth most common complaint seen in US EDs (American College of Emergency Physicians, 2002). The minority of these patients have a secondary cause for headache, and an even smaller number have a grave and potentially catastrophic cause for headache, such as meningitis or subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). The majority of patients presenting to the ED have a primary headache disorder, such as migraine, and while only 10% of those presenting to the ED with headache are “repeat customers,” more than 50% of headache visits to the ED are comprised of patients who seek care for headache in the ED on a repeated basis (Blumenthal et al., 2003).