Prevalence of tension and migraine headaches among the students of Ilam Medical University

Headache is the most common pain syndrome among almost 90% of the populations who suffer from headache attacks in a year period. This study was performed to consider the prevalence of tension and migraine headaches among Ilam University students. This descriptive analytic and cross-sectional study was accomplished using clustural sampling on 309 students. The applied questionaires were designed based on IHS criteria. Prevalence of tension headaches and migraine and their relation with some variables such as marital status, field of study, intensifiers, and etc. were investigated. Overall prevalence was 63.4%, while 42.3% accounted for tensional and 8.1% for migraine headaches. The results clarified no significant relationship between headache types and field of study (P=0.7). Prevalence of tensional and migraine headaches in females was 45.1% and 8.9% respectively. This rate in males was 36.5% and in females 8.9% respectively. The results implied no statistically significant relationship between headache types and those of age (P=0.78), educational course (P=0.4), local status (P=0.77), and residential place (P=0.7). Our results clarified a significant relationship between migraine headaches and marital status, furthermore, migraine prevalence was of more prevalence among single students.