Preventing migraines cuts pain and costs

Disease management guidelines have long recommended a daily drug regimen to reduce patient discomfort, but a new study concludes it reduces health care expenditures, too.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. March 24/31, 2003.

The use of medication to prevent migraines by patients who regularly use acute drugs to control pain could save hundreds of dollars per year per patient and significantly reduce the number of physician or emergency department visits, according to a study published in the March Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain.

Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia retroactively analyzed medication use and health system utilization by migraine patients who were part of a large claims database.

They compared patients' utilization for the six months before the addition of preventive medication, when they were only on acute medication, to that of the year following the addition of the preventive drugs.

"From a cost point of view, preventive therapy is actually a cost benefit," said Stephen D. Silberstein, MD, lead author of the paper and professor of neurology at Thomas Jefferson. "Patients don't need unnecessary diagnostic tests or doctors visits or emergency department visits."

Previous studies had only shown reductions in patient discomfort and medication overuse, which can lead to rebound headaches. This was the first to look at the cost impact of prevention strategies as recommended by the U.S. Headache Consortium.