Headaches May Indicate Other Conditions

Elizabeth K Rende DNP, RN, CPNP-PC, PMHS-BC, FAANP of Duke Pediatric Neurology discussed 2 types of headaches—primary and secondary—in an interview filmed at the 2019 National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners conference in New Orleans. How a headache is treated is dependent upon its cause, she said.

Elizabeth K Rende DNP, RN, CPNP-PC, PMHS-BC, FAANP: Primary headaches; I’m going to separate them out to primary and secondary. So, primary headaches are headaches that are just, by their very nature, they’re headache disorders. So, migraine, tension-type headaches are the two most common types of headaches that kids can have.

Secondary headaches are headaches that can be quite severe and that almost mimic attention-type or a migraine headache, but they are caused by another cause. So, our job as headache providers is to try and determine if a headache is either a primary or secondary, and if we think there’s a secondary cause, then we need to evaluate or get them to the right people to do so.