Luz Saúde : Most Headaches Have Treatment

Most Headaches Have Treatment

'Most recurrent headaches have efficient treatment', highlights Raquel Gil Gouveia, neurologist from Hospital da Luz Lisboa and coordinator of its Headache Centre, when evaluating the initiative of that unit on the European Headache Day.

Headaches or migraines are among the most usual complaints on medical consultation and a frequent cause of absentness, being classified by the World Health Organization as main cause of neurologic incapacity.

In Portugal, about 1 million people suffer from migraine. However, it is a poorly recognized and even underestimated disease, requiring a multidisciplinary medical approach, not only involving neurology, but also specialties such as physical medicine and rehabilitation, psychiatry, dentistry, gynaecology-obstetrics and maxillofacial surgery.

Besides this comprehensive medical approach, Hospital da Luz Lisboa Headache Centre aims to raise awareness to the importance of headache as a disease, developing several informative initiatives for the public in general, such as those organized in the European Headache Day (September 12).

The Headache Centre medical team - Raquel Gil Gouveia (coordinator), Elsa Parreira and Inês Brás Marques - offered clarification about the disease to all interested, and, in that hospital's auditorium, physiatrists from the Centre of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation gave talks, explaining physical exercises that anyone can do and rules to adopt to prevent headache and/or mitigate its effects.