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| |  DG DISPATCH - HEADACHE: Patients Lack Confidence In Doctors' Ability To Treat Migraines By Cameron Johnston Special to DG News BARCELONA, SPAIN -- June 25, 1999 -- More than half of all Americans who suffer from migraine headaches are prepared to put up with the pain rather than go to their family doctors for treatment, a new study has revealed. Most patients feel that family doctors are not able to do anything to treat the condition and that they are not really interested in dealing with their patients’ migraine complaints, according to the findings, which were presented at the 9th Congress of the International Headache Society meeting in Barcelona, Spain. Discouraging as these statistics appear, a migraine specialist involved in the study said they are actually a considerable improvement over similar studies done in the past. Dr. Richard Lipton, a professor of neurology and epidemiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York, said he was "heartened" by the statistics. They actually represent a significant improvement over statistics gathered in a 1989 survey in which only 16 percent of migraine patients said they were satisfied with the treatment they received from their family doctors. "When we first started looking at this issue, we found that only 16 percent of the people in the US in 1989 were seeing doctors for their migraines," Dr. Lipton said. In their new study, Dr. Lipton’s and his colleagues looked at more than 5000 subjects throughout the US. The results show that, among those who suffered from migraines, 42 percent of patients had never consulted a doctor about their condition and that 26 percent had stopped seeing their doctors about the condition because they felt the doctor could not help. Furthermore, 15 percent said their doctors were not interested in dealing with patients with migraines. Money was not the cause, either, Dr. Lipton pointed out, noting that less than one-third of the respondents said they could not afford to have a doctor treat their migraines. At least some of this patient dissatisfaction stems from patients being given one prescription by their family physicians and then not complaining again, which prompts the doctor to believe that the problem has been brought under control, Dr. Lipton said. In addition, patients assume that because the doctor has given them a prescription for one anti-migraine medication, he or she has offered all that is available. Patients therefore, “feel guilty” about asking a doctor about their headaches because to a large degree, headaches are still not regarded as a legitimate complaint that deserves medical treatment, Dr. Lipton added. To deal with the issue, he said, doctors should begin by ensuring that the patients have realistic expectations about what to expect from currently available migraine drugs. "Patients have to be told that migraines are probably not curable, but they can be treated," he said. "I would argue that primary care doctors have time for diabetes, heart failure and hypertension, and the issue is whether or not we believe that an illness that causes episodic disability - such as migraines - should be treated any differently than and illness that might cause problems 10-15 years down the road,” Dr.Lipton said. “I would argue that the ability to alleviate the disability here and now can make a difference in people’s lives."
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