How do you manage patients with chronic migraine as well as medication overuse headaches?
In patients with chronic migraine and possible medication overuse headaches due to chronic narcotic use, what’s your strategy for those patients? How do you deal with the pain meds dilemma?
Answer from: at Academic Institution
I agree with Dr. @Alessi-LaRosa about the treatment for chronic migraine and MOH for patients on opiates and/or barbiturates. If they are taking frequent opiates, I prefer to have a pain management doctor detoxify them. In the past, I slowly decreased their medication while giving them long-acting c...
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at UCLA Dr. @Abdelkader,
We had an inpatient unit at...
at Kaiser Permanente I totally agree with you, Dr. @Abdelkader. It is m...
Chronic migraine is treated with a combination of transitional, abortive, and preventive medications. If a patient is on opiate medications or medications with barbiturates, they are at a very high risk of having rebound headaches even if used only 5 times in a month per the literature. Therefore, i...
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at Riverside Medical Group This is helpful. What are your thoughts when it co...
at Hartford HealthCare Great question. I would set them up with a pain ma...
The worst to control in these scenarios are the patients who are on chronic opioids for chronic intractable other pain, not headaches. I usually go through the standard first-line meds and at times, CGRP antagonists alone with no luck. I have a few on combination therapy of Botox, topiramate, and a ...
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at Riverside Medical Group I keep coming back to the answers here every time ...
Just to add to all traditional treatments.
Most of the time, neck abnormality is a trigger so include instructions for better neck posture, neck stretching, and release technique for a more successful treatment.
I'm in pain management and work with our headache specialists. I spend a lot of my time having conversations with patients about opioid wean and the most important thing is to get patients on board. A process of trust, as they have to understand things may feel "worse" (when they initially get off o...
I educate patients about the pitfalls of medication overuse headaches and try my best to transition them to a CGRP inhibitor. However, challenges arise when patients require opiates for concurrent arthritis and face difficulties tapering off these medications with their pain specialists. If MOH stem...
Dr. @Abdelkader, We had an inpatient unit at...
I totally agree with you, Dr. @Abdelkader. It is m...