The journal of headache and pain
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Comparative Study
Reliability of pain threshold measurement in young adults.
The objective was to examine reliability of pressure and thermal (cold) pain threshold assessment in persons less than 25 years of age, using intra-class correlation (ICC) and coefficients of repeatability and variability. We measured thresholds to pain from pressure algometry and ice placed at the hand and head in 10 healthy volunteers aged 18-25. Intra-rater reliability was examined with ICC. ⋯ Reliability of repeat assessments was high as assessed by ICC, although coefficients of repeatability and variation indicated considerable inter-individual variation in repeat measurements. Pressure algometry and strategically placed ice appear to be reliable techniques for assessing pain processing in young adults. Reliability studies employing ICC may benefit from complementary estimation of CR and CV.
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This overview of the published epidemiological evidence of migraine helps to identify the size of the public-health problem that migraine represents. It also highlights the need for further epidemiological studies in many parts of the world to gain full understanding of the scale of clinical, economic and humanistic burdens attributable to it. This paper presents some of the work on migraine undertaken by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Global Burden of Disease study conducted in 2000 and reported in the World Health Report 2001. ⋯ Migraine causes a large proportion of the non-fatal disease-related burden worldwide. Our knowledge of headache related burden is incomplete and it is necessary to add to it epidemiological studies in many parts of the world and to combine this with measurements of disability using both DALYs and WHO's ICF Classification. The work described here has been the base for the Global Campaign against Headache disorders: "Lifting the Burden", launched in 2004 jointly by WHO, IHS (International Headache Society), WHA (World Headache Alliance) and EHF (European Headache Federation).