Causes of headache in a Sri Lankan general practice

All patients who consulted with headache as the main clinical problem were included in the study. Each patient's headache was diagnosed using a data collection form dur ing the course of routine consultation. The data collec tion form was a computer program [Headache Assess ment Questionnaire (HAQ)] developed by me for use in my practice. HAQ consists of 47 questions each of which has a yes or no answer. The questions were designed to generate International Headache Society (IHS) (5) or In ternational Association for Study of Pain (6) criteria based diagnoses. When such standardised criteria could not be collected, standard textbook descriptions were used to design the questions. HAQ can diagnose 21 common causes of headache in primary care.