Clinical Decision Rule May Help Doctors Identify Patients With Headache In Emergency Department

"Headache accounts for approximately 2 percent of all emergency department visits, and subarachnoid hemorrhage is one of the most serious diagnoses, accounting for only 1 percent to 3 percent of these headaches. Although the decision to evaluate patients with new neurologic deficits is relatively straightforward, it is much more difficult to determine which alert, neurologically intact patients who present with headache alone require investigations—yet such patients account for half of all subarachnoid hemorrhages at initial presentation," according to background information in the zoloft side effects in women article. A clinical decision rule is a tool that uses 3 or more variables from the history, examination, or simple tests to predict a diagnosis for a patient. These rules help clinicians make diagnostic or treatment decisions. The investigators had previously developed three clinical decision rules for use in patients with headache to determine which patients require investigation (imaging, lumbar puncture) for subarachnoid hemorrhage. Jeffrey J.
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