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Narcotic analgesics for acute migraine in the emergency room: are we meeting Headache Societies' guidelines?

Abstract

We analysed 161 patients with acute migraine in our emergency room (ER) to identify the use of narcotic analgesics as first-line treatment. Twenty-four percent of patients were treated with opioid analgesics and 76% patients were treated with non-opioid analgesics. Pain was completely relieved in 100 (62%) patients, partially relieved in 50 (31%) patients and was not relieved in 11 (7%) patients at the time of discharge. Pain relief was not related to the use of opioids vs. non-opioids. The treatment of acute migraine in our ER is in line with the guidelines of the Headache Societies and needs further improvement.

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Correspondence to M. Wasay.

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These findings were presented in a preliminary form at the 12th International Headache Congress at Kyoto, Japan, October 2005

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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Wasay, M., Zaki, K.S., Khan, S.U. et al. Narcotic analgesics for acute migraine in the emergency room: are we meeting Headache Societies' guidelines?. J Headache Pain 7, 413–415 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10194-006-0338-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10194-006-0338-7

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