• Classic migraine: People suffering from classic migraines experience an aura before their headaches, which is a visual disturbance (outlines of lights or jagged light images).
• Common migraine: This accounts for 80% of migraine cases. The patient does not experience any aura before a common migraine. It is less severe than classic migraines.
• Status migrainosus: This is a rare type of migraine. It causes intense pain that usually lasts longer than 72 hours. Usually, the patient requires hospitalization.

• Abdominal migraine: This is usually found in children with a family history of migraine. This type of migraine causes symptoms like abdominal pain without a gastrointestinal cause, which may last up to 72 hours. It also causes nausea, vomiting, and flushing or paleness (pallor).
• Basilar artery migraine: This type of migraine involves a disturbance of the basilar artery in the brainstem. Basilar artery migraine primarily occurs in young people. The symptoms manifested are: severe headache, vertigo, double vision, slurred speech, and poor muscle coordination.
• Carotidynia: This type is also known as lower-half headache or facial migraine. It produces deep, dull, aching, and sometimes piercing pain in the jaw or neck. Moreover, tenderness and swelling of the carotid artery in the neck is observed. This type is primarily prevalent in older people. Carotidynia migraine attacks usually occur several times weekly and last a few minutes to hours.
• Headache-free migraine: This type is characterized by the presence of aura without headache.
• Ophthalmoplegic migraine: This type of migraine attack begins with a headache in the eye that is accompanied by vomiting. With time, the headache progresses, the eyelid droops (ptosis) and nerves responsible for eye movement become paralyzed. Ptosis caused by this migraine may last for days or even weeks.

Written by: Healthplus24 team
Date last updated: January 15, 2010

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• Symptoms and Migraine headache
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• Diagnosis of Migraine headache
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