Lobbying to modify ‘MBBS’ curriculum:Experts
Prof. Aziz B Sonawala, a senior neurologist and President Pakistan Headache Society said headache is one of the most common complaints seen by doctors yet headache disorders are not given the due attention.
"Consequently majority of people are resorting to self medication reaching the borders of abuse with its associated morbidity," he said.
The neurologist said this was because doctors are rarely introduced to the problem at their undergraduate level medical education.
These aspects are largely ignored at the post graduate level training programs in the country, he said.
"This turns all the more problematic as headache is present only with symptoms and there are no signs hence patients are considered to be merely complaining without any reason," he said.
Prof. Sonawala said this is in a situation where 20% of all complaints attended by neurologists are headache while 15% to 20% of all patients coming to family physicians have headache as the main complaint.
Fortunately, he said that contrary to the patients' apprehensions most headaches are of non serious nature although headache as migraines and cluster headache could be debilitating.
Headaches do have their implications in terms of loss of working hours and pain coupled with inconvenience to the patients and people around them.
"Acute shortage of neurologists, not more than 70 to 90 for a population of 160 million makes it necessary that family physicians are well versed to understand the underlying factor for headache," he said.
"Very often no pharmacological intervention is required and a sensitized doctor can guide more efficiently the sufferers about the non pharmacological interventions," he said.
He also discussed in detail the different types of headache including primary and secondary headache.
Primary headache, he said contribute to 90% of all headache and have no underlying cause hence are a problem in themselves, Migraine headaches that involves 10% population in any society and tension type headache that occur in at least 30% of the population pertain to the category of primary headache.
Need to sensitize public about efficient management of the condition was also suggested on the occasion.
Dr. Sarwar Siddiqui associated with Aga Khan University discussed in detail the Tension Type Headache and said the patients have to be reassured that this is not because of any organic problem as tumor.
"Diagnosis of headache is in itself a headache for a large majority of doctors," he commented.
Dr. Farrukh Shohab Khan discussed pharmacological options for patients suffering from migraines.
The speakers said disease history was extremely important for all primary kinds of headache including migraine and tension type headache as gadgets have rarely any role in their diagnosis.
Dr. Abdul Malik, Dr. Nadir Ali Syed, Dr, Mark William Weatherall, Dr. Ismail Khatri, Dr. Shaukat Ali also actively participated in the discussion.
Experts also discussed Medication Overuse Headaches, Psychiatric Comorbidities in Headache, Migraines in Women Specific Issues in Diagnosis and Management and Migraine in Children Diagnostic as well as Therapeutic Problem.
Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011