UMEM Educational Pearls

Medication-overuse headache (MOH) is one of the most common chronic headache disorders

Worldwide prevalence of 1 2%

Characterized by chronic headache and overuse of different headache medications

Withdrawal of the overused medication is the treatment of choice

A 2014 study looked at adolescent patients treated in a headache clinic with chronic post traumatic headaches (concussion headaches)

77 had chronic post-traumatic headache of 3-12 months' duration

54 of 77 (70.1%) met criteria for probable medication-overuse headache.

After the OTC medicine was stopped 68.5% had resolution or improvement !!

Excessive use of analgesics postconcussion may contribute to chronic post-traumatic headaches in some adolescents.

Sometimes the advise of "just keep taking the motrin and it'll get better" isnt the answer

References

Heyer et al., 2014 Pediatric Neurology