An observational study to assess the knowledge of migraine among patients with migraine at a tertiary care teaching hospital

ABSTRACT

Background: Migraine is a common debilitating headache the exact cause of which is not known. Efficient and proper treatment of migraine involves accurate diagnosis, educating the patients and to make them aware of the disorder and finding the best medication for the management of pain. This will also increases the patients� adherence to medication and will help in improving their quality of life. The objective of the study was to assess the awareness of migraine patients towards various aspects of migraine in a tertiary care teaching hospital.Methods: This was a cross-sectional observational questionnaire-based study conducted from January to March 2017 in ASCOMS&H, Sidhra, Jammu. The self-administered pre-validated questionnaires pertaining to various aspects of migraine were distributed among the patients diagnosed of having migraine and attending the Neurology Out patient department (OPD). Patients of either sex with a diagnosis of migraine and age ?18 years were included in the study. The data was analyzed with the help of descriptive statistics.Results: In the present study, majority of the patients suffering from migraine were in the age group of 18-40 years (58.6%) and females were more commonly affected about 60.9% than males. There was no family history of migraine in 78.1% of the patients. About 87.4% of the patients had 2-6 attacks of migraine per month. The most common triggering factor cited by the patients was lack of sleep in 29.9% followed by stress in 27.6% and less water intake in 26.4% of the patients.Conclusions: From the present study, it can be concluded that the patients were aware about the associated signs and symptoms but they had inadequate knowledge about all the aspects of the disease. Therefore, it is important to make patients more aware of the disease to increase their compliance to treatment and to improve their quality of life.