Acute Headache Presentations to the Emergency Department: A Statewide Cross‐sectional Study

Abstract

The majority of patients had a benign diagnosis, with intracranial hemorrhage and bacterial meningitis accounting for only 3% of the diagnoses. There are variations in the proportion of patients receiving CT head scans between city-regional and principal-referral hospitals. As 38% of headache presentations overall underwent CT scanning, there is scope to rationalize diagnostic testing to rule out life-threatening conditions.