Migraine patients do not get the help they need

A survey in which nearly 20,000 migraine patients participated showed that only 7 percent of those with severe migraine have continuous contact with a neurologist. Only neurologists have the opportunity to provide the most effective treatment and the difference between the regions was large in terms of who gets access to neurologists.

A large survey was conducted on DOKTORN.com at the end of 2019, where about 20,000 survey responses were received. Nearly half of the responses came from patients with severe migraines. The results show that 75 percent of those with severe migraines are women, which is in good agreement with previous surveys.

– Data clearly show that migraine patients with severe migraine do not get the help they need. Only neurologists and pain doctors have access to the tools that can help these patients. The problem is that there is a great shortage of neurologists in Sweden and that most clinics have long queues or do not even receive migraine patients, says Johan Nyberg, neurologist at Migränhjälpen .

Previous surveys from the Institute for Health and Medical Economics with 760 questionnaire responses showed that the loss of production for those with severe migraines corresponds to 9,500 full-time jobs per year. Most migraine patients are of working age, so when they do not receive adequate treatment, it hits society extra hard. The study from DOKTORN.com included 9,165 patients with severe migraine, which shows that these patients have an average of 2.1 days of sick leave per month (does not include sick leave with reduced working capacity). It is estimated that there are 200,000 patients with severe migraines, which would mean that this patient group costs many billions for taxpayers annually.

– We see that there is a big difference between the Regions where patients with severe migraines may have continuous contact with a neurologist. In the Västra Götaland Region, for example, 6 per cent have continuous contact with a neurologist compared with the Stockholm Region, where the corresponding figure is 10 per cent. Regardless, these are low numbers as 61 percent of patients with severe migraines state that they want to see a neurologist, says Johan Bloom, from DOKTORN.com.

A digital neurologist clinic has now been started to streamline access to neurologists for patients with severe migraines.

– When I saw that my clinic had a two-year queue for these patients who suffer severely, I decided that something had to change. We have now started Migranhjalpen.se which is a digital clinic where patients receive assessment, treatment and continuous follow-up over a long period of time. Patients fill in digital diaries to evaluate the treatment effect of various drugs. The demand has been very great from patients but also from neurologists who want to work with us, to help patients in an effective way, says neurologist Johan Nyberg.

Visit Migränhjälpen here .

For more information:

Questions about the survey
Johan Bloom, CEO of Add Health Media, owner of DOKTORN.com
[email protected], 0733-64 84 90

Questions about migraines and treatment
Johan Nyberg, neurologist and founder of migranhjalpen.se, [email protected], 0734-28 27 59

Questions about Migraine Aid
Mattias Bodin, CEO of Migraine Aid
[email protected], 070-689 53 77

This is how the survey was conducted

DOKTORN.com announced digitally about the migraine survey via, among others, Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet, Omni with a reach of 90 percent of all Swedes. On average, each Swede received 20 ad impressions over 3 months. During these three months, the landing page was visited 400,000 times and 45,000 started the survey, of which 25,000 completed all 14 questions. After all data was washed from duplicates and more, there were almost 20,000 answers left to analyze.

Questions answered were:

• Severity of migraine / headache (MIDAS score, where sick leave days, sick leave, etc. are estimated three months back).
• How migraines affect quality of life.
• What treatment do you have for your migraine.
• What help you have received from the care.
• What help you would like to get from healthcare.
• Age, sex and associated region.