Shownotes
Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum, and I’m back with my co-host, Nachi Gupta. This month, we’re tackling an incredibly important topic - evaluation and management of life threatening headaches in the Emergency Department.
Nachi: Fear not, this will not simply be “who needs a head CT episode”; we’ll cover much more than that. Listen closely as this is an important topic, with huge consequences for mismanagement.
Jeff: Absolutely. As some quick background - headaches account for 3% of all ED visits in the US, with 90% being benign primary headaches and less than 10% being secondary to other causes like vascular, infectious, or traumatic etiologies. It’s within these later 10% that we are looking for the red flag signs to identify the potentially life-threatening headaches.
Nachi: And to do so, Dr. David Zodda and Dr. Amit Gupta, PD and APD at Hackensack University Medical and Trauma Center, and their colleague Dr. Gabrielle Procopio, a PharmD, have done a fantastic job parsing through the literature, which included over 500 abstracts, 89 full text articles, guidelines from ACEP and the American Academy of Neurology, as well as canadian and european neurology guidelines, to summarize the best evidence based recommendations for you all.
Jeff: We would be remiss to not also mention Dr. Mert Erogul of Maimonides Medical Center and Dr. Steven Godwin, Chair of Emergency Medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine.
Nachi: Alright, so let’s get started with some definitions and pathophysiology. The international classification of headache disorders 3, or ICHD-3, classifies headaches into primary, secondary, and cranial neuropathies.
Jeff: Primary headache disorders include migraine, tension, and cluster headaches. Secondary headaches include those secondary to vascular disorders, traumatic disorders, and disorders in hemostasis. These are the potentially life threatening headaches that can have a mortality has high as 50%.
Nachi: And the final category includes cranial neuropathies, such as trigeminal neuralgia.
Jeff: And I think we can safely say that that wraps up our discussion in this episode on cranial neuropathies, moving on….
Nachi: Headaches result from traction to or irritation of the meninges and blood vessels, which are the only innervated central nervous system structures. Activation of specific nerve ganglion complexes by neuropeptides like -- substance P and calcitonin gene-related peptide -- are thought to contribute to head pain.
Jeff: It is important to note that all headache pain shares common pain pathways, thus response to pain medications does not exclude potential life threatening secondary causes of headache. This led to the ACEP guideline which states just that..
Nachi: I feel like that deserves ding sound as it's a critically important point. To repeat, just because a pain medication relieves a headache, that does not exclude dangerous secondary causes!
Jeff: And what are the life threatening headaches? Life-threatening headaches include subarachnoid hemorrhage, cervical Artery Dissection, which includes both vertebral Artery Dissection and carotid artery dissection, cerebral Venous Thrombosis, idiopathic intracranial hypertension, giant cell arteritis, and posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, or PRES.
Nachi: Slow down for a second and let’s not skip over your favorite section.. Let’s talk pre hospital care for headache patients.
Jeff: Good call! Pre-hospital care is fairly straightforward and includes a primary survey, conducting a focused neurologic exam, and assessing for red flag signs, which include focal neurologic deficits, sudden onset headache, new headache in those over 50, neck pain or stiffness, changes in visual Acuity, fever or immunocompromised State, history of malignancy, pregnancy or postpartum status, syncope, and seizure. That’s quite a list. For a visual reference, see Table 3 i