The features and burden of headaches within a chiropractic clinical population: A cross-sectional analysis

The physical impact of migraines on female chiropractic patients: A qualitative study

Background

Migraines are highly prevalent among the female population and have a significant burden on one's quality of life and physical functioning.

Aim

The study explored the physical impact and contributory factors of migraines on women and their experience of chiropractic treatment for migraine pain management.

Setting

The study was conducted in the eThekwini region of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Methods

The study used a qualitative descriptive design and adopted purposive sampling. The data were collected through 12 semi-structured interviews, between March and September 2021, and analysed using thematic analysis.

Results

The first theme that emerged focused on the physical effects of migraines. The second theme related to the factors that contributed to migraines. The third theme that emerged focused on chiropractic treatment for migraines.

Conclusion

The majority of the participants experienced chronic migraines and migraines without aura. The participants felt incapacitated and experienced debilitating physical effects with their migraines. The study highlighted that chiropractic treatment was favourable among the female population in improving the quality of life and reducing the severity, disability, duration of suffering and frequency of migraines. It was revealed that chiropractic was the preferred non-pharmacological approach for migraine treatment, as it proved to be a beneficial and effective treatment for migraine pain management.

Contribution

The findings contribute to a greater awareness of chiropractic as an effective evidence-based treatment approach for migraine pain management, which may be beneficial to migraineurs and healthcare practitioners.

Chiropractic student diagnosis and management of headache disorders: A survey examining self-perceived preparedness and clinical proficiency

OBJECTIVE

To explore the self-perceived preparedness and clinical proficiency in headache diagnosis and management of Australian chiropractic students in senior years of study.

METHODS

Australian chiropractic students in the 4th (n = 134) and 5th year (n = 122) of 2 chiropractic university programs were invited to participate in an online cross-sectional survey. Descriptive analyses were conducted for all variables. Post hoc analyses were performed using simple linear regression to evaluate the relationship between self-perceived preparedness and correctness of headache diagnosis and management scores.

RESULTS

Australian chiropractic students in senior years demonstrated moderate overall levels of self-perceived preparedness and proficiency in their ability to diagnose and manage headache disorders. Final-year students had a slightly higher self-perceived preparedness and proficiency in headache diagnosis and management compared to those students in the 4th year of study. There was no relationship between self-perceived preparedness and correctness of headache diagnosis and management for either 4th- or 5th-year chiropractic students.

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that there may be gaps in graduate chiropractic student confidence and proficiency in headache diagnosis and management. These findings call for further research to explore graduate chiropractic student preparedness and proficiency in the diagnosis and management of headache disorders.

An Application of a Hybrid Intelligent System for Diagnosing Primary Headaches

(1) Background: Modern medicine generates a great deal of information that stored in medical databases. Simultaneously, extracting useful knowledge and making scientific decisions for diagnosis and treatment of diseases becomes increasingly necessary. Headache disorders are the most prevalent of all the neurological conditions. Headaches have not only medical but also great socioeconomic significance. The aim of this research is to develop an intelligent system for diagnosing primary headache disorders. (2) Methods: This research applied various mathematical, statistical and artificial intelligence techniques, among which the most important are: Calinski-Harabasz index, Analytical Hierarchy Process, and Weighted Fuzzy C-means Clustering Algorithm. These methods, techniques and methodologies are used to create a hybrid intelligent system for diagnosing primary headache disorders. The proposed intelligent diagnostic system is tested with original real-world data set with different metrics. (3) Results: First at all, nine of 20 attributes – features from International Headache Society (IHS) criteria are selected, and then only five most important attributes from IHS criteria are selected. The calculation result based on the Calinski–Harabasz index value (178) for the optimal number of clusters is three, and they present three classes of headaches: (i) migraine, (ii) tension-type headaches (TTHs), and (iii) other primary headaches (OPHs). The proposed hybrid intelligent system shows the following quality metrics: Accuracy 75%; Precision 67% for migraine, 74% for TTHs, 86% for OPHs, and Average Precision 77%; Recall 86% for migraine, 73% for TTHs, 67% for OPHs, Average Recall 75%; F₁ score 75% for migraine, 74% for TTHs, 75% for OPHs, and Average F₁ score 75%. (4) Conclusions: The hybrid intelligent system presents qualitative and respectable experimental results. The implementation of existing diagnostics systems and the development of new diagnostics systems in medicine is necessary in order to help physicians make quality diagnosis and decide the best treatments for the patients.