The typical duration of migraine aura: A systematic review

Abstract

The data indicate the duration of NHMA may be longer than one hour in a significant proportion of migraineurs. This seems to be especially true for non-visual aura symptoms. The term probable seems inappropriate in ICHD-III so we propose reinstating the category of prolonged aura for patients with symptoms longer than an hour and less than one week.

Biphasic neurovascular changes in prolonged migraine aura in familial hemiplegic migraine type 2

“…However, in severe attacks, even non-motor symptoms occasionally last more than a few days or even weeks 2 3. Spreading depression (SD), which is a short-lasting slowly propagating wave of neuronal and glial depolarisation, is widely accepted as mechanism underlying visual aura,4 5 but the mechanism underlying prolonged aura symptoms remains unknown.…”

Prolonged acute migraine with aura and reversible brain MRI abnormalities after liquid sclerotherapy

“…The aura symptom spreads gradually over a period of 5 minutes and (for each individual aura) lasts between 5 and 60 minutes (although this upper limit was set arbitrarily). Indeed, it has been reported that aura lasts for more than one hour in up to 37% of patients [14]. This epidemiological reality has been recently taken into consideration in the third edition of the International Classification of Headache Disorders, in which aura lasting more than an hour but less than a week (in the absence of radiologically confirmed brain ischemia) was defined as “probable migraine with aura (prolonged aura)” [15].…”

Migraine: mimics, borderlands and chameleons

“…A recent systematic review of the usual duration of migraine aura found that migraine aura lasted longer than 1 h in a significant proportion of migraineurs (up to 60% in aphasic aura) 4. The authors' suggested labelling of these patients as having probable, rather than definite, migraine is inappropriate.…”