Sickness absence and disability pension days in patients with cluster headache and matched references

Objective To determine whether patients with cluster headache have more sickness absence and disability pension days compared to matched references and possible associations with sociodemographic characteristics. Methods We performed a registry study of all patients who had received specialized health care for cluster headache (ICD-10 code G44.0) aged 16-64 years and living in Sweden in 2010 (n = 3,240; 34% women) and matched references from the total population (n = 16,200) regarding their sickness absence and disability pension days in 2010. Results Mean number of sickness absence days in 2010 was 16.13 (95% confidence interval, 14.05-18.20) among patients with cluster headache and 6.54 (5.97-7.11) among references. When combining sickness absence and disability pension days, patients with cluster headache had 63.15 (58.84-67.45) days, references 34.08 (32.59-35.57) days. Among patients, women had twice as many sickness absence days than men: 23.71 (19.36-28.06) vs 12.41 (10.19-14.63). When adding disability pension days, those numbers were 83.71 (75.57-91.84) vs 52.56 (47.62-57.51). Patients with cluster headache had significantly more sickness absence days in all ages compared to the reference group. Patients with elementary education had more sickness absence/disability pension days (85.88 [75.34-96.42]) compared to those with high school (64.89 [58.82-70.97]) and college/university (41.42 [34.70-48.15]) education. Conclusion This nationwide study shows that patients with cluster headache have significantly more sickness absence and disability pension days compared to matched references. Furthermore, among patients, women had more sickness absence and disability pension days than men.