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The most important signs of danger of a headache patient include exceptionally intense or acute headache, transient loss or progressive impairment of consciousness, and neurological deficit symptoms. These patients are referred to an urgent assessment by a physician. Computed tomography scanning of the head is carried out in the case of suspected hemorrhage of a headache patient. Routine diagnosis employing cerebrospinal fluid analysis can be abandoned when excluding subarachnoid hemorrhage in a patient with headache symptoms, if blood is with certainty not observed in the CT scan of the head and no more than six hours have passed after the onset of the symptom. If subarachnoid hemorrhage is detected, cerebral CT angiography will be performed at the same time and a neurosurgeon consulted about the need of operative treatment.

Unconsciousness is a directly life-threatening condition that requires immediate action to reveal its cause. The cause of unconsciousness is usually metabolic or toxic and in the rest of the cases structural and intracranial. Unconsciousness results from a disturbance of function of either the reticular activating system or both cerebral hemispheres. Treatment of an unconscious person begins with the confirmation of vital functions. Special attention is paid on head and neck injuries, meningism, pupillary inequality and papillary stasis. Both radiological and laboratory investigations are usually required. Owing to its quickness, CT scan of the head is the basic neurological examination, adequately revealing the common intracranial causes. Treating an unconscious patient calls for the complete range of a physician's expertise. Determined action and knowledge of common and treatable diseases will, however, bring the situation under control.

One third of the population suffer from vertigo at some stage of their life. Some of its causes are harmless, some life-threatening, some will resolve spontaneously and some never. Vertigo is divided into four main types: vertigo, syncope, disturbance of balance and nonspecific vertigo. Medical history is the most important method of examination and leads to diagnosis in two out of three cases. Attempts are always made to provoke the sensation of vertigo and the possible nystagmus during the consultation. The success of the specific treatment in accordance with the primary cause determines the patient's prognosis.

If a migraine attack takes more than 72 hours it is called status migrenosus (SM). The most important contributing factor in SM is prolonged excessive use of anti-migraine drugs. Before starting any treatments for SM, severe causes underlying the prolonged pain should be excluded. The cornerstones of pharmacological therapy for SM are parenterally administered anti-inflammatory drugs and triptans as well as valproate and dopamine antagonists. With regard to long-term prognosis, the recognition and treatment of medication overuse headache is essential.

Migraine aura is almost always a visual disturbance involving "positive" (rippling, stars) and "negative" (visual field defect) phenomena. It expands and gradually vanishes within 5 to 60 minutes. Evolution of symptoms and positivity are typical for migraine. TIA appears more abruptly and is usually of shorter duration. Negativity is typical for it, i.e. part of the visual field, speech, eye movement, ability to swallow, sensation or muscle strength disappear without the above mentioned features of migraine. In migraine, aura is usually followed by headache, whereas in TIA headache is less frequent.