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Preventive Treatment Options for the Pregnant Headache Patient

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Effective Migraine Treatment in Pregnant and Lactating Women: A Practical Guide

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Key Chapter Points

  • Most pregnant women with headaches note significant improvement in their headache pattern by the end of the first trimester with sustained improvement in the second and third trimesters.

  • Patients failing to note improvement by the end of the first trimester generally continue to experience headaches throughout the remainder of pregnancy. These patients may be candidates for preventive therapy.

  • Use of safe preventive agents is preferred over allowing the woman to overuse acute pain medications and risk developing medication overuse (analgesic rebound) headaches.

  • Non-drug approaches should be considered first and maximized to limit the need for headache preventive medication during pregnancy.

  • Safe options for headache preventive therapy, including propranolol, gabapentin in early pregnancy, and magnesium are available.

  • Headache prevention medication, if used during pregnancy, requires close cooperation among the headache-treating provider, the patient, and the obstetrician.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

    Dawn A Marcus

  2. Dean Health System, Madison, WI, USA

    Philip A. Bain MD

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  1. Dawn A Marcus
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  2. Philip A. Bain MD
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© 2009 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Marcus, D.A., Bain, P.A. (2009). Preventive Treatment Options for the Pregnant Headache Patient. In: Effective Migraine Treatment in Pregnant and Lactating Women: A Practical Guide. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60327-439-5_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60327-439-5_6

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-60327-438-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-60327-439-5

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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