Headache patients clogging hospitals

THOUSANDS of Queenslanders are visiting emergency departments for headaches each year when they should be seeking help from their general practitioners, a senior emergency doctor says.

Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital emergency medicine research director Kevin Chu said Queensland EDs treated more than 13,000 cases of headache annually, costing $ 750 each, on average, and collectively costing more than $ 10 million a year.

Every additional hour spent in the ED increases the cost by another $ 1000.

Associate Professor Chu said only about three in 100 headache cases presenting to the ED needed help for serious causes, such as an infection, tumour or bleeding on the brain.

“If you have a sudden onset, severe headache, the worst in your life, that’s the time to come to hospital,” he said.

“Obviously, if they’ve got weakness on one side of the body, including the face, or if they have slurred speech, that could be indicators of a stroke.

“That’s when they should come to the hospital.”

With funding from the Emergency Medicine Foundation, Prof Chu and colleagues studied headache presentations to 34 Queensland public and private hospital emergency departments over a four- week period.

He said most headaches were considered “benign”, meaning they weren’t serious.

“The majority of headaches, particularly if they are a recurrence of headaches they’ve had previously, are what we call chronic headaches.

“Perhaps it’s a worsening of a pre- existing headache. These are headaches they should ideally be going to see a GP about so they can be managed.”

He said some patients with migraines went to the ED wanting a CT scan when they did not need one. CTs gave radiation to the brain, which should be avoided if not needed.