Migraine
Diagnosis
Types of migraine
The types of migraine, as defined by The International Headache Society (1988), are as follows:
- Migraine without Aura
- Migraine with Aura
- Typical Aura
- Prolonged Aura
- Familial hemiplegic migraine
- Basilar migraine
- Aura without migraine
- Migraine with acute onset aura
- Opthalmoplegic migraine
- Retinal migraine
- Childhood periodic syndromes
- Complicated migraine (status migrainosus and migraine infarction)
- Migraine disorders not falling in the other categories
Migraines with auras can be defined by the length of the aura period, acute onset developing within four minutes (similar to stroke and ischaemic symptoms), typically developing and lasting from five to sixty minutes and prolonged lasts between 60 minutes and one week. Complicated migraine also has a prolonged aura period, generally being one week or over.
Basilar migraine, the most common, presents with brain stem, cerebral and occipital dysfunction, with symptoms including diplopia, blindness, numbness, vertigo and tinitus as some examples. The most common symptoms are visually related, bilateral numbness and tingling; these can often last for a period of more than one hour. [16, 51]
