3.1.1 Episodic cluster headache

The patient is a 34-year-old electrician presenting with recurrent short attacks of severe headache. He has had nearly fifty attacks in total since they began, occurring in a bout that has now lasted about a week, during which he gets up to seven attacks a day, each lasting roughly 95 to 100 minutes if he does not treat it. The pain is always confined to one side of the head, sitting above the eye, and rated as severe rather than mild in intensity. Whenever an attack strikes, his nose on the same side turns congested and blocked. He recalls two such bouts across his life, each separated by many symptom-free months.