Abstract

Background
Migraine is a common, disabling illness and imposes great burden on society. Migraine- related disability is often poorly communicated between patients and physicians. The prevalence, disability and medical service utilization behavior of migraine has not been evaluated sufficiently in Korea. The goal of this study is to determine the proportion of migraine among patients presented with headache in neurology clinic and to assess the level of headache related disability of patients.
Methods
This survey recruited patients who consulted to neurologists with a chief complaint of headache in 17 hospitals in Korea. Patients answered a self-administered questionnaire. The investigators independently responded another questionnaire about their patients' headache and assessed headache related disabilities after diagnostic interview. Patients suffering from headache ≥15 days per month were excluded.
Results
Among 570 patients (female 433 (76.0%), mean age 47.8±15.6) who responded adequately the questionnaire, 376 patients had migraine. Fifty-eight percent of the migraine patients were newly diagnosed as having migraine through this survey. However, 74.9% of migraineurs have taken pain-relieving drugs when headache developed; 12.3% of the migraineurs overused the medications. One hundred forty one (37.5%) migraineurs reported that they miss family, social and leisure activities because of headache. Thirty percents of migraineurs were on prophylactic medications and 14.4% of them have visited emergency room due to severe headache. The neurologists would recommend prophylactic medication in 64.3% of patients who were not on prophylaxis.
Conclusions
This study showed that migraine is the most common headache syndrome in the neu- rology clinics of Korea. Significant portion of the migraine patients have migraine-related disability. A majority of migraineurs exposed pain-relieving drugs without exact diagnosis and some of them overused them. Korean Journal of Headache 6(2):121-128, 2005