Migraine in general practitioners

A self-administerd questionnaire was posted to 1 129 medical general practitioners in an urban and in a rural area of England. The prevalences of headache, and of the features of migraine, in the year immediately preceding the survey were similar in the two areas. After allowing for the different age and sex composition of the populations, these prevalences were also similar to those found in the general population during an early survey in Wales. About 13% of the male and 25% of the female general practitioners thought that they had had migraine in the previous year. There was little evidence that doctors with 'classic' migraine differed from those with 'common' migraine in the proportion who experienced other migrainous features (unilateral distribution of headache and accompanying nausea) or in their response to treatment with ergotamine.