Approximately 10 % of women and 5 % men at age 70 experience severe recurrent or constant headaches. Severe headache presenting fort he first time in a patient over age 50 unusual and requires a thorough medical and neurologic examination. Primary headache etiologies in older patient include tension- type headache, migraine, migraine accompaniments, hypnic, cough headacde, chronic daily headache. For all of these effective pain control includes pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic interventions. Secondary etiologies include temporal arteritis,cerebrovascular or cardiac ischemia and intracranial hemorrhage or tumors, trigeminal neuralgia. Head pain may also be cervicogenic orgin or related to glaucoma or sleep apnea. In secondery cases, pain manegement is specific to treatment of the underlying structural or systemic disease.

Keywords: headache, elderly, primary, secondary etiologies