Medicated migraine in Lausanne

Our Global Medical Institute center focuses on three categories of migraine: frontal migraines, occipital migraines and temporal migraines.

Global Medical Institute makes a point of distinguishing between the different types of migraine, depending on the starting point of your migraine pain.

As you can see, it is very important for you to know where your pain starts, so that we can offer you the right treatment. A treatment that will soothe you, calm your pain and reduce or even eliminate the symptoms of your migraine.

In the following pages, we’d like to give you a few details about migraine medication, so that you can find out more.

Why is it important to locate the starting point of your pain? What is a medicated migraine? What treatments are available at our Global Medical Institute center?

This section will help you make a free and informed choice.

The importance of localizing the pain of a medicated migraine

As mentioned above, it is very important for every one of our patients to be able to locate the starting point of their pain.

Indeed, if you can locate the starting point of your pain expression, our surgeons will be able to help you treat your migraine, whether temporal, occipital or frontal.

At our Global Medical Institute center, we focus first and foremost on the starting point of the pain, before proposing any medical or surgical treatment.

Sometimes, an initial consultation can be carried out via teleconsultation from the comfort of your own home: Global Medical Institute’s specialists will be able to explain whether your suffering can be relieved by our minimally invasive approach.

By focusing on the location of the pain, we give ourselves the means to treat your symptoms. That is why it’s important for you to be able to locate it.

It is important to get a precise definition of your migraine, but all our patients tend to get lost in the different types of migraines, denominations, definitions and so on.

Migraines are not easy to define – there are many different types. Our neurologists specialize in the classification and treatment of migraines. Our surgeons specialize in treating the pain expression of your migraines.

The only important point to focus on is the location of the pain, in particular the point of pain onset. It is on the basis of this location that we can help you decide whether the pain is frontal, occipital or temporal.

If the starting point of the pain is consistent with the pinched nerve or vessels, if that's where the pain began: that's where our doctors and surgeons can act. We decompress the nerve and free it from the structures that are trapping it: these structures can be vessels, muscles, tendons, etc.

What is a medicated migraine?

A medicated migraine is linked to drug overuse (too many drugs are used and become the cause of your migraines).

When you suffer from migraine attacks, in most cases you use NSAIDs (Ibuprofen, Novalgine, Aspirin, Diclofenac, Voltaren, etc.) to fight inflammation and pain, or triptans.

These drugs can be very effective, but migraines can return fairly quickly.

However, dosage (dose and quantity of medication) is extremely important. In fact, it is strongly recommended not to exceed 8-10 days of medication per month. Otherwise, we speak of drug abuse. In some forms of migraine, patients may even take 8-10 drugs a day.

This abuse, this “hypermedication”, can be responsible for headaches. So, the more you suffer, the more drugs you take, but the worse the condition becomes, the harder it is to control. This vicious circle makes headaches an almost daily occurrence.

Medication-induced migraines or “medication-abuse headaches” (MAC) are defined as follows:

• Headaches at least 15 days a month for more than three months;
• Consumption of triptans more than 10 days per month, or NSAIDs more than 15 days per month;
• Headache frequency has increased during the period of drug abuse, and returns to its initial frequency after drug withdrawal.

What causes a medicated migraine?

As you can see, if you suffer from migraine and take medication on a regular basis, you need to make a precise assessment of the number and type of medications you are taking before setting up a treatment program. Particularly if the headache is caused by medication, taking a pill to relieve it will only increase its persistence.

In concrete terms, if you regularly expose yourself to analgesics such as NSAIDs, triptans or then again narcotics, the latter can react by lowering the trigger threshold of your migraines even further, leading to a vicious circle: rebound headache or migraine medicamentosa.

At-risk sufferers report 2 to 3 days of attacks per week with treatment, or more than 10 days of migraine per month for more than 3 months.

The type of pain typical of medicated migraines is generalized, like a circle in the head, like a vice, with no defined starting point either in the area or in the temporal region, as these migraines are persistent and often daily.

What treatments does Global Medical Institute offer for your medicated migraine?

The only way out of this vicious circle is to wean off the medication or stop taking it. Support is often necessary. Sometimes a background migraine treatment is combined, such as an anti-epileptic, anti-hypertensive or anti-depressant. This treatment does not relieve the attacks, but aims to space them out and make them less severe.

Withdrawal is therefore an essential step towards improving your condition and implementing effective treatment.

Withdrawal involves the complete cessation of antimigraine drugs. An antidepressant is sometimes added.

This stage lasts 7-14 days and may be combined with antidepressants such as Amitriptylin. The approach is multidisciplinary, with psychological and educational support. A particularly painful rebound headache may occur on the second day of drug withdrawal.

Once withdrawal is complete, deep migraine therapy can be initiated. NSAIDs and triptans are resumed in the event of an attack, but no more than twice a week. Taking time off work can sometimes be beneficial, or even necessary, until the migraine has stabilized.

In some cases, an initial consultation can be carried out via teleconsultation from the comfort of your own home: Global Medical Institute's specialists will be able to give you useful information to help you free yourself from medicated migraines, and explain whether your suffering can be relieved by our minimally invasive approach.