South America

摘要

It has become commonplace, whenever one talks about headache epidemiology worldwide, to state that data about Latin America are scarce, if any. However, this situation has changed gradually. During the last 10 years, important studies have been published on the topic, and some of them are reviewed in this chapter. Emphasis is given to regional differences. Lavados and Tenhamm,1 in a Santiago-based epidemiological study in 1997, found the prevalence of headache to be 39.7% (95% CI 37.1%-42.3%); the prevalence of migraine was 7.3% (95% CI 5.9%-8.6%); 2.0% in males (95% CI 0%-3%) and 11.9% in females (95% CI 9.6%-14.2%). The female to male ratio in migraneurs was 6. According to the authors, the prevalence of migraine was in the lower range of comparable previous studies from other countries. A possible reason could be that the population of Santiago is roughly 80% miscegenated (Mestizos, a racial mix of Spanish and Native America descendants). It was also observed that similar to other studies, migraine leads to reduced working productivity; migraneurs lost a mean of 77 equivalent working hours per year because of migraine.