Drug abuse headache

Abstract

Introduction: Drug abuse headache is encountered in about 1-4% in general population. Patients tend to use drugs to relieve pain, but drug use itself is the third major cause of headache after migraine and tensional headache. The purpose of the study was to identify the correlation between chronic migrain with drug abuse and addictive brain. Materials and metods: We took a lot of patients with chronic migraine diagnosed for minimum 1 year which use pain medication and analyzed their responses to Beck depression questionaire, Spilberger's anxiety test, SCL-90, DES, LEEDS, DAST 10, CAGE test, AUDIT test, MAST test, Drug use qustionaire and headache questionaire. Results: In our study we observed the frequency of ergotamine is decreasing in contrast to triptan use which is more frecquent. Pacients who overuse antimigraine drugs tend to excessively use other drugs or have an addiction for certain activities. Conclusion: Medical abuse is an important disturbing factor for the patient with chronic diseases. Medication overuse headache is an important global issue with an increasing prevalence. The more addictions a patient has, the more complicate the migraines’ clinical features are, the longer the evolution and the treatment of migraine is.