Correlation of Sleep Quality and Anxiety with Pain Intensity in Primary Headache Patients

Abstract

Background: Headache is the most common diagnosis that is referred to a neurologist. Chronic headaches
are one of the biggest challenges that are rarely handled and treated well. Therefore, the clinician should
look for the cause of headache in order for the patient’s complaints can be handled and not being chronic.
One of the causes or risk factors for headache is sleep disturbance and anxiety.
Objective: To analyze the correlationbetween sleep quality and anxiety with the intensity of pain in primary
headache patients.
Materials and Method: This is a case-control study. We obtained 52 subjects through consecutie admission
sampling. The subjects were examined for their pain intensity using Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS).
Sleep quality examination were performed using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and for anxiety we
used Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HARS). The data were analyzed using chi-square test and paired t-test.
Result: Subjects with mild NPRS (<4) and moderate-severe NPRS (?4) had the same percentage (50.00%).
There was a significant correlation between sleep quality (p = 0.012) and anxiety (p = 0.020) with pain
intensity in primary headache. Sleep quality with anxiety also has a statistically significant relationship
(p = 0.001).
Conclusion: There is a correlation between poor sleep quality and anxiety with pain intensity in primary
headache patients.