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FREQUENCY OF STRUCTURAL BRAIN LESION IN PATIENTS PRESENTING WITH NON-FOCAL DEFICIT HEADACHE ON CT BRAIN.

Zaira Shafiq, Rehman Saeed, Hafiza Maryam Mushtaq

Headaches are common clinical presentations. These are non-specific on one hand and on other they are predictor of severe underlying causes. The persistent headache without any focal deficit needs further investigations. Objective: To determine the frequency of structural brain lesion in patients presenting wit non-focal deficit headache on CT brain. Methods; This cross sectional study was conducted at Nawaz Shareef Teaching hospital, Lahore, CMH Lahore and DHQ, DG Khan, between the periods of January 2019 to June 2019in which 80 cases selected via non probability consecutive sampling, presenting with non focal deficit headache as per operational definition were included. Their detailed demographic data and other history regarding focal lesions was taken and recorded. They then underwent CT brain plain at Radiology department of the same institute. The different lesions detected were noted. Results: In this study there were total 80 cases presenting with the history of headache and out of these 48 (60%) were females and 32 (40%) males. The mean age at presentation was 28.42±5.40 years. In 55 (68.75%) cases, the CT was absolutely normal. Regarding different lesions detected sinusitis was seen in 19 (23.75%) cases, CSOM in 3 (3.75%), brain abscess in 2 (2.50%) and SOL in only 1 (1.25%) case. Regarding the lesions among gender stratification 38 (69.09%) females had normal CT as compared to 17 (30.91%) males while sinusitis was common in males affecting 12 (63.16%) cases as compared to 7 (36.84%) females with a near significance of 0.07. Conclusion: Headache is a common presentation at hospitals and in two third of cases the CT brain done reveals no pathology. Serious disease was seen in only 3 cases. Key words: Headache, CT, CSOM, SOL

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