Migraine variants and beyond.

Migraine is amongst the oldest of diseases known to mankind. Migraine is a heterogenous entity, usually characterised by periodic attacks of headache on one or both sides of the head. These may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, increased sensitivity of the eyes to light (photophobia), increased sensitivity to sound (phonophobia), dizziness, blurred vision, cognitive disturbances, and other symptoms. Migraines are not always preceded by an aura and some migraines may not include headache. If migraine does not manifest itself in the form of headache but in some other form such as paroxysmal episodes of prolonged visual auras, atypical sensory, motor, or visual aura, confusion, dysarthria, focal neurologic deficits with or without a headache, it is labelled a Migraine Variant (MV). MV is therefore diagnosed by the history of paroxysmal symptoms with or without cephalgia and a prior history of migraine with aura, in the absence of other medical disorders that may contribute to the symptoms. Many of the MVs have been included and redefined in the revised edition of The International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD-II) 2004 classification. These include hemiplegic migraine, basilar migraine, childhood periodic syndromes, retinal migraine, complicated migraine and ophthalmoplegic migraine. Even though conditions such as vertiginous migraine, acute confusional migraine of childhood and nocturnal migraine are well recognized entities, they have not yet been included in IHCD-II, but will be discussed here in brief because they are relatively common conditions.