Migraine Preventive Medication

Abstract

Preventive therapy is useful when patients experience more than three moderate to severe headaches per month, or if the abortive medications have not provided sufficient relief. It is an individual decision based upon the person’s willingness to take daily medications, the severity of the headaches, and how much the patient is bothered by the migraine situation. By utilizing daily preventive medicine, patients actually ingest less overall medication because they are not constantly chasing after the headaches with analgesics. The goal of preventive therapy is to decrease the number of migraines by at least 50% to 90% and to lessen the severity of the pain. Patients must realize that we are simply attempting to decrease the overall impact of their migraine headaches, not completely eliminate them. It would be outstanding if the preventive medication completely stopped the headaches from occurring, but this is not realistic with most patients. A compromise must be struck between overmedicating the patient and the number of migraines they suffer; to add more preventive medication in order to eliminate one more migraine every 2 months is usually not worthwhile. With triptans, we now utilize less preventive therapy.