One in five soldiers who sustained a concussion in Afghanistan or Iraq developed headaches on a daily or near daily basis, a new study has shown.
Concussion is a common injury for those fighting in Afghanistan and was for soldiers in Iraq as well. Headache frequently follows a concussion, and a new study conducted at the Madigan Traumatic Brain Injury Program at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., has shown just how pervasive post-concussion headache is for wounded U.S. troops.
Military researchers studied 978 soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and sustained a concussion during deployment. They compared those who experienced chronic daily headache—a headache that has occurred 15 or more days per month for three months—with soldiers who had episodic headache, defined as occurring less than 15 days per month.
Of those studied, 20% reported chronic daily headache (CDH), and 78% reported episodic headache. Soldiers with CDH experienced a median of 27 headache days per month with nearly one-quarter reporting headache every day. Study results also showed that the number of concussions, blast exposures and concussions with loss of consciousness was not substantially different between soldiers with CDH and those with less frequent headache. Also notable was that 41 percent of soldiers with CDH tested as having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to only 18% of soldiers with episodic headache.
Major Brett Theeler, a physician and the lead author of the study, noted that the findings linking CDH and PTSD are important. They suggest that headaches could be related to the physical injury of the brain and that traumatic stress may be an important link in headaches becoming chronic.
“These findings justify future studies examining strategies to prevent and treat CDH in military service members following concussive injuries,” he wrote.
Currently, the military does not routinely treat soldiers to prevent chronic headache, Dr. Theeler told Reuters Health. “The problem is that there are no treatments proven to be effective in this setting,” he said. He noted that a multi-disciplinary approach to headache treatment, including behavioral therapies, will be essential because the cause of the headaches is not known.
The study appeared online March 8 in the journal Headache.
