Long-lasting cephalic jabs (?) The Vågå study of headache epidemiology.

Jabs (stabs) usually last < or = 3 s and are located in the skull area, mostly anteriorly. In many cases, there are only a few jabs during lifetime. With this definition, jabs are frequent, thus at 35.2% in the Vågå study of headache epidemiology. Long-lasting jabs (?), i.e. paroxysms lasting 10-120 s, were present in six out of 1779 parishioners. These pain paroxysms seemed mainly to be side-locked, but could not be provoked. Possibly, these long-lasting jabs after all mainly are regular jabs. To include the < or = 2-minute-long paroxysms among the jabs will necessitate a rather drastic change of criteria. This group of jabs may, nevertheless, be heterogeneous. In two parishioners, the paroxysms were associated with a migraine-like pain. The paroxysms occasionally became most intense (2-10 times the basal pain), and then, and only then, were they combined with stark, visual phenomena: wave-like movements ('undulation'), anopsia, but also: immense dizziness, nausea/vomiting. The nature of the side-locked basal pain, although migraine-like, remains unsolved.