Awareness of triggers of headache in migraine patients – a study from a tertiary centre from central india

Abstract

Background:A lot of discrepancies in the number of migraine triggers have been observed in numerous studies. Migraine patients do not recognize easily their headache triggers in clinical practice. Focusing the patient attention on migraine attack triggers is important for management of migraine. Awareness of migraine triggers has not been previously studied in India. Therefore, we planned to study the awareness of triggers of headache among migraine patients from central India.Materials and methods:We recruited 180 migraine patients to evaluate the awareness about their headache triggers. Patients were asked to perform two tasks. Task 1 was to report their migraine trigger spontaneously in 2 minutes. Subsequently, Task 2 was to identify common/uncommon known triggers from given lists. Awareness of triggers among population was estimated by difference of distribution of self reported versus identified common/uncommon triggers.Results:The average number of self reported triggers among all patients was found to be 2.21±1.80. Noise (74.4%), Sunlight (70.6%), Smoking (70.0%), Fasting (67.2%) were the most prevalent trigger factors. Difference of distribution between Task 1 and Task 2 was calculated, which showed (200% difference in self reported versus common triggers) and (83.3% difference in self reported versus uncommon triggers).Conclusion:Migraine patients have poor awareness of their headache triggers and hardly reports triggers unless asked specifically.

Keywords: headache, migraine, triggers, migraine with aura, migraine without aura, awareness of triggers of migraine.