What is a migraine?

  Migraine is a disorder characterized by episodic unilateral or bilateral head throbbing pain with nausea, vomiting or photophobia or phonophobia due to vasodilatory dysfunction. The main clinical features are episodic headache, spontaneous remission, recurrent attacks, and normal intervals.  Most of them start in adolescence, and there are more females than males, with two to three times more female patients than male. Some patients have a family history of migraine.  1. Migraine with aura: It was once called typical migraine, accounting for about 10% of migraine, and most of them have family history. Having aura before headache is the main feature of this type of migraine. The most common symptoms before the onset of headache are visual aura, such as visual field defect, dark spot, black haze, flashing light, gradually increasing in size and spreading around, and also visual object degeneration and object color change, followed by somatosensory aura, such as numbness and abnormal sensation in one limb or face, etc. Motor aura is less common. The duration of aura is mostly 10-20 minutes. The aura may be accompanied by simultaneous or subsequent temporal or retro-orbital pulsating headache on one side, or bilateral temporal or retro-orbital pulsating headache, or total headache, unilateral or bilateral frontal headache and uncommon occipital headache. The headache is often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, photophobia or phonophobia, irritability, odor terror and fatigue, etc. Temporal artery protrusion can be seen, and the headache can be aggravated by forceful activity and relieved after sleep. Most patients have headache attacks for a few hours to 2 days, with children lasting 2 to 8 hours. After the headache subsides, there are often fatigue, tiredness, weakness and poor appetite, etc., which can be improved in 1 to 2 days. The frequency of headache is variable, more than 50% of patients have no more than one attack per week.  2.Migraine without aura: It was once called common migraine and is the most common type in clinical practice, accounting for about 80% of migraine patients. Without aura symptoms, the headache is similar to migraine with aura, but lasts longer and is slightly less severe than migraine with aura. The symptoms may be complicated by the persistence of pain with cervical muscle contraction. There is often scalp tenderness during the attack, and vomiting may occasionally make the headache end.  3.Ocular muscle paralysis type of migraine: It is less common and occurs when migraine with or without aura gradually subsides, and ocular muscle paralysis occurs on the side of headache, and the muscles innervated by the motoneurotic nerve are most often involved. Attention should be paid to exclude intracranial aneurysm and painful oculomotor palsy.  4. Hemiplegic migraine: It is rare in clinical practice, and most often develops in childhood. Hemiplegia can be an aura symptom of migraine, or it can occur simultaneously with or after headache. The hemiplegia may occur alone or with hemiplegia and aphasia. The hemiplegia may last from ten minutes to several weeks after the migraine subsides. It can be divided into two types: familial with autosomal dominant inheritance, and sporadic with alternating attacks of migraine with and without aura.  5. Basilar artery migraine: It is common in children and adolescent females. The aura symptoms often involve the brainstem, cerebellum and bilateral occipital lobes, with head heavy, dizziness, diplopia, nystagmus, tinnitus, dysarthria, bilateral limb numbness and weakness, ataxia, altered consciousness, fall attack and black haze, etc. The aura symptoms last for about 20-30 minutes, and then there is pulsating pain in the occipital region, often accompanied by nausea and vomiting. The seizures are usually accompanied by nausea and vomiting. After the attack, it is completely normal.  6.Migraine isotonic attack: It is seen in some patients with family history of migraine or migraine with or without aura, the headache is not obvious during the attack, or even no headache, but the aura symptoms such as vertigo, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, limb and joint pain are prominent, which is called migraine isotonic attack.  Migraine attacks lasting more than 72 hours are called migraine persistent state. However, there can be a remission period shorter than 4 hours in between.