Are frequent headaches a sign of a brain tumor? How do I need to check? How to treat?

Headache is a common clinical symptom and almost everyone experiences headache. It can develop in all populations, male and female, young, middle-aged and elderly. There are many causes of headache, including neuralgia, intracranial infection, intracranial tumor, cerebrovascular disease, and systemic diseases such as acute infection and poisoning, but the most common is functional headache, which is often associated with work and study tension, stressful life, and poor sleep and rest. According to the international classification, headache is divided into primary headache, including cluster, tension, migraine and other headache; secondary headache is caused by the aforementioned intracranial diseases.   The common headache in ordinary life is usually primary headache: migraine: the pain is often heavy, lasting up to 3 days, sometimes aggravated by physical work, often unilateral, throbbing headache, accompanied by nausea, vomiting reaction, photophobia, etc.  Tension headache: the most common, generally mild to moderate headache, not related to physical labor, often bilateral, non-pulsatile, and usually not accompanied by nausea, vomiting, photophobia, and other symptoms.  Cluster headache: The headache lasts for a short period of time, usually peaks in 15 minutes and lasts for about 1 hour, and the pain is often unbearable, but it is obviously relieved afterwards. It is often described as “drilling, stabbing, cutting and burning”.  The diagnosis of primary headache is mainly based on the following points: 1. whether each headache attack lasts more than 4 hours, 2. whether the headache is unilateral or bilateral, whether it is throbbing, 3. the severity of the headache, whether it is accompanied by nausea, vomiting, photophobia and other manifestations, and 4. whether the headache worsens with daily activities.  The treatment plan for migraine is divided into two types: 1. the stepwise method, in which non-specific drugs such as aspirin and fenbendazole are used for acute attacks of pain, and if they are ineffective, specific drugs such as tretinoin and ergotamine are used instead. 2. the tiered method, in which non-specific drugs are used for mild pain and specific drugs are used for severe pain. Some studies suggest that the stratified approach may be more effective. Medications should be used in adequate doses early in the course of pain.  Treatment of headache also includes behavioral cognitive therapy to reduce the number and severity of headache attacks by instructing patients to properly cope with the various stresses and other psychological disorders associated with headache.  Secondary headaches mainly refer to organic headaches caused by intracranial diseases, such as intracranial tumors, cerebrovascular disease, aneurysms, vascular malformations, and infections. In the case of long-term chronic headache, especially when accompanied by symptoms such as vision loss, sensory abnormalities, epilepsy, and local limb weakness, it is recommended to have a cranial CT examination, and only when organic diseases are excluded, can the headache be considered primary.  There is also a kind of life-threatening severe headache, which is often described as “violent knife-like”, “head is about to split”, “head is about to explode”, ” The headache can be accompanied by nausea and vomiting, limb convulsions, and in severe cases, rapid confusion. This kind of headache is often caused by bleeding brain aneurysm, the mortality rate is very high, and must be quickly sent to a specialist hospital for treatment. The famous comedian Zhao Benshan was suffering from this disease, but he recovered successfully after minimally invasive aneurysm embolization by Professor Song Donglei, the chief expert of “Donglei Brain Doctor Group”, and is still active on the stage of skits.