Impact of a public sensitization campaign on migraine management in France

Abstract

Migraine is a common and frequently disabling condition. Nevertheless, many migraine sufferers do not consult for migraine, are not medically followed up and self-treat the attacks. “Tour de France of migraine” consisted of free-access conferences held in six large towns in France following a wide public information campaign. This sensitization campaign aimed at providing participants with educational information on migraine disease and on current therapies. Headache sufferers were then invited to respond to two consecutive questionnaires delivered at the end of the conferences and 3 months later to assess the influence of the information delivered on their migraine management. Tour de France of migraine recruited mainly severe migraine sufferers, most of whom had already consulted and were medically followed up. However, migraine management was often suboptimal in these subjects since most of them found their acute treatment of attacks ineffective and only few of them received a prophylactic treatment. Three months after the conferences, more than half of respondents had consulted for headaches. There was a significant improvement in migraine-related disability, as reflected by a significant decrease in mean Headache Impact Test 6-item score, which might have been related to the higher proportion of subjects receiving a prophylactic treatment of migraine. The Tour de France of migraine campaign revealed the difficulty in sensitizing migraine sufferers towards the necessity of being medically followed up. Mainly patients with severe migraine attended the conferences and derived clinical benefit from the educational program. Other strategies should be developed to reach a wider population of migraine sufferers.

Migraine and Migraines of Specialists: Perceptions and Management

“…A previous survey of neurologists 25 indicated that a frequency of 3 or more headaches a month was the most often used threshold in practice. Low reported use of prophylactic medication has been a systematic finding of previous studies of migraine treatment in France 3,23,24 and elsewhere. In the present study, the majority of (12/17) neurologists who used a prophylactic treatment used a β‐blocker.…”

“…It is possible that treatment standards have improved since the time of these relatively old studies (conducted in 2000 and 2003). Indeed, the findings of the more recent “ Tour de France of migraine ” survey (October 2007) have indicated that 77% of participants were by then using recommended treatments, 24 although it should be noted that this survey only interviewed migraine sufferers sufficiently interested in migraine and motivated to attend a public debate on migraine.…”

Access to care - an unmet need in headache management?

“…Several explanations can be invoked for this phenomenon, i.e. low priority of headache in the list of interventions of national health system, insufficient awareness, inadequate preparation of GPs, limited availability of dedicated healthcare structures, stigma and many others [ 3 - 8 ].…”

Long-term effects of a sensitisation campaign on migraine: the Casilino study

“…Donnet et al [ 27 ] organised a “Tour de France of migraine” consisting of free-access conferences held in six large towns in France following a wide public information campaign. The aim of that sensitization campaign was to provide participants with educational information on migraine and on current therapies.…”

“…The campaign encouraged patients not only to seek treatments, but also to perform a better management of therapy by teaching how and when to take drugs and to avoid possible stressing factors. The sensitization/education of patients strongly impact on patients’ quality of life and produce additional clinical benefits [ 27 ].…”