Anesthesiology and Reanimation Specialist Prof. Dr. Serbulent Gökhan Beyaz gave important information about the subject. The persistence of pain in some patients due to the frequent use of drugs used in the treatment of pain is called drug overuse headache. Medication overuse headache (MOH) is one of the most common causes of chronic daily headache. If combined analgesics, which are drugs used in headaches, are used in amounts exceeding 10 times a month, other painkillers are used in amounts exceeding 15 for a long time, and the headache does not regress despite treatment, other causes of headache should be investigated and drug overuse headache should be brought to the agenda.
It is shown that painkillers are used excessively and unnecessarily all over the world, especially in Third World countries. According to the data, 3-1% of the general population use analgesics daily, and 3% at least once a week. It is obvious that this is a serious health problem worldwide.
Psychological factors, especially patient anxiety, are an important cause in MOH. Although migraine patients do not have frequent attacks, they use drugs unnecessarily because they are afraid that migraine will cause loss of work power or prevent social activities. This risk was found to be more significantly increased in combination analgesics with caffeine or codeine used in the treatment of migraine or tension-type headache.
Another important condition accompanying chronic headache is pain in other body parts such as fibromyalgia, temporomandibular joint disease and back/low back pain. It has been shown that there is a bidirectional relationship between chronic headache and musculoskeletal pain. The main objective should be to prevent this situation, which causes both financial losses and deterioration in the quality of life.
Drug overuse can be prevented by good treatment of other conditions such as migraine headache, which is common in the community, and trigeminal neuralgia, which is characterized by severe pain attacks that impair the quality of daily life, even if it is rare.
According to the international classification of headache, trigeminal neuralgia (TN); It is defined as a sudden onset, abrupt ending, short-term electric shock-like, repetitive and unilateral pain. The pain is limited to one or more branches of the trigeminal nerve and can also be triggered by harmless stimuli such as touching or eating. Secondary pain attacks, which are quite severe, may prevent patients from eating and brushing their teeth. Brain and vascular imaging must be done. When drug therapy is insufficient, radiofrequency radiofrequency can be applied to Gasser's ganglion, which is a special nerve ball in the skull base, in suitable patients.
If you have daily headaches and you have been using daily pain relievers or migraine medications for a long time, consult your doctor for differential diagnosis and treatment.
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