Aetiology of headache in clinical ophthalmic practice at a tertiary care hospital of Karachi

Objective: to determine the aetiology of headache in patients seen for an ocular examination. methods: this cross-sectional,descriptive study was conducted at ophthalmology department of karachi medical and dental college,abbasi shaheed hospital,karachi,from january to december 2014,and comprised patients with headache. patients were registered through non-probability consecutive sampling technique. a predesigned proforma was used to collect data. complete ocular examination and investigations were conducted along with neuro-ophthalmological examination. data analysis was done using spss 16. results: of the 379 patients,225(59.4%) were female and 154(40.6%) were male. the mean age was 35.12±16.387 years (range: 6-75 years). conditions associated with headache were divided as ocular,non-ocular and combined pathologies. among ocular causes,asthenopia was a major entity as 62(16.36%) asthenopic patients presented with refractive errors. these were followed by presbyopics who presented with complaint of headache 56(14.78%). the number of computer users with similar complaint was 18(4.76%). among other ocular causes of headache,the number of patients with corneal ulcers was 22(5.80%),glaucoma 15(3.96%) and endophthalmitis 4(1.06%). among the non-ocular causes were hypertension 59(15.57%),sinusitis 41(10.82%) and migraine 47(12.4%). conclusion: the majority of patients had associate ocular causes such as refractive errors and anterior segment pathologies. © 2017,pakistan medical association. all rights reserved.