To the best of our knowledge, persistent visual symptoms, lasting months or years without evidence of infarction, a rare complication of migraine with aura, has been reported in only 20 patients. We report the case of a 43-year-old woman with a 31-year history of migraine with typical visual aura. At presentation, she experienced a visual aura in her right hemifield followed by a pulsating headache. The visual symptoms persisted. There were no abnormal findings on neurological and ophthalmological examinations, EEG, visual evoked potentials (VEPs), brain computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Both brain single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and brain perfusion MRI revealed decreased left fronto-parieto-occipital and right occipital blood perfusion. A perfusion MRI, performed 7 months after symptom onset and almost complete extinction of symptoms, was normal. As previously reported, we demonstrated a cortical hypoperfusion by SPECT in a case of persistent visual aura. For the first time this finding was confirmed by perfusion MRI.

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One hundred and one patients suffering from chronic daily headache (CDH) and medication overuse were treated, in an in-patient setting, with abrupt discontinuation of the medication overused, intravenous hydrating, and intravenous administration of benzodiazepines and ademetionine. The mean time to CDH resolution was 8.8 days. The in-patient withdrawal protocol used was effective, safe and well tolerated. There was a trend for a shorter time to CDH resolution in patients who overused triptans ( P = 0.062). There was no correlation between time to CDH resolution and either the type of initial primary headache or duration of medication abuse, whereas time to CDH resolution was related to daily drug intake ( P = 0.01). In multiple regression analysis, daily drug intake, age and type of medication overused were independent predictors of time to CDH resolution. At 3-months' follow-up, no patient had relapsed and was again overusing symptomatic medications. ᮀ Chronic daily headache, medication overuse headache, shortterm follow-up, withdrawal therapy

Background Rare primary headaches are mainly included in Chapters 3, Trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias, and 4, Other primary headache disorders, Part One of the International Classification of Headache Disorders 3rd edition. Epidemiological data are scarce, mostly emerging from case series or small studies, with the exception of cluster headache. In order to overcome the knowledge gap about rare primary headaches, the RegistRare Network was launched in 2017 to promote research in the field. Methods A retrospective cohort study including patients who, from April 30, 2014 to May 1, 2017, visited seven Italian tertiary Headache Centres, was undertaken to estimate in that clinical setting prevalence and incidence of headaches included in Chapters 3 and 4, Part One of the International Classification of Headache Disorders 3rd edition. Prevalent headache is defined as a headache recorded within the study timeframe, regardless of when the diagnosis was made. Incident headache is defined as a headache diagnosed for the first time in the patient during the study period. Results Twenty thousand and eighty-three patients visited the participating centres, and 822 (4.1%) prevalent cases, of which 461 (2.3%) were incident cases, were registered. Headaches listed in Chapter 3 affected 668 patients, representing 81.3% of the total number of prevalent cases. Headaches listed in Chapter 4 affected 154 patients and represent 18.7% of the total number of prevalent cases. Cluster headaches represent the most frequently diagnosed rare headaches (70.4%). For 13 entities out of 20, no cases were registered in more than 50% (n ≥ 4) of the centres, and for 14 entities more than 50% of diagnoses were incident. Conclusions This large, multicentre study gives the first wide-ranging snapshot of the burden in clinical practice of rare headaches and confirms that cooperative networks are necessary to study rare headaches, as their prevalence is often very low. The launch of a disease registry by the RegistRare Network will favour research in this neglected population of headache patients. Trial registration NCT03416114.

Context: Nonpharmacologic treatment, such as osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMTh; manipulative care provided by foreign-trained osteopaths) may be a beneficial complementary treatment for tension-type headache. However, to the authors' knowledge, the benefit of OMTh in the management of tension-type headache has not been explored, especially chronic tension-type headache (CTTH). Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of OMTh compared with traditional treatment in reducing pain intensity, frequency, and duration of CTTH, and to evaluate the objective postural measurement of the forward head posture (FHP) as an integral parameter in the assessment of the effects of OMTh and traditional management of CTTH. Methods: Patients with CTTH were registered at the Headache Centre of Trieste in Italy. At the time of the study, none of the patients had been taking any headache prophylaxis in the past 3 months. A 3-month baseline period was recorded by all patients with an ad hoc diary. Patients were randomly placed in the test or control group using a simple randomization program in Excel (Microsoft). Patients in the OMTh group underwent a 3-month period of OMTh, and patients in the control group were treated with amitriptyline. Pain intensity, frequency, and duration of headaches, as well as FHP were analyzed. Results: The study enrolled 10 patients (mean [SD] age, 42.6 [15.2] years) in the OMTh group and 10 patients (51.4 [17.3] years) in the control group. The final assessment of OMTh patients showed statistically significant changes in all headache parameters: pain intensity decreased from a mean (SD) score of 4.9 (1.4) to 3.1 (1.1) (P=.002); frequency decreased from 19.8 (6) to 8.3 (6.2) days per month (P=.002); and the duration of headaches decreased from 10 (4.2) to 6 (3) hours (P=.01). Significant improvement of all parameters was found in the control group as well: pain intensity decreased from a mean (SD) score of 5.9 (0.7) to 4.2 (1.75) (P=.03); frequency decreased from 23.4 (7.2) to 7.4 (8.7) days per month (P=.003); and duration decreased from 7.8 (2.9) to 3.6 (2.1) hours (P=.002). Forward head posture significantly improved in OMTh patients (P=.003). Conclusions: Our data suggested that OMTh may be an effective treatment to improve headaches in patients with CTTH. Our results also suggest that OMTh may reduce FHP.