title: Acute pharmacotherapy of migraine, tension-type headache, and cluster headache.
abstract: In most migraine patients acute therapy is needed. Migraine can be treated either with specific drugs, the triptans and ergot alkaloids, or with NSAIDs. Triptans are a major step foreward in migraine therapy. The therapeutic gain for headache relief is 50% for subcutaneous sumatriptan whereas it is 30-40% for most oral triptans. After oral triptans sustained pain free is only 30%. There is thus still ample room for improvement of acute therapy in migraine. For tension-type headache there is no specific therapy and it is treated with NSAIDs. Only 17-32% become pain free after these drugs. For attacks of cluster headache oxygen and subcutaneous sumatriptan can be used. Intranasal triptans can be an alternative.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Neurology, Glostrup Hospital, DK-2600, Glostrup, Denmark. tfelt@inet.uni2.dk
authors.forename: Peer
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tfelt-Hansen
mesh_terms: D003027:Cluster Headache / Q000188:drug therapy*; D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008881:Migraine Disorders / Q000188:drug therapy*; D018781:Tension-Type Headache / Q000188:drug therapy*