WASHINGTON – The development of new educational and training opportunities to increase primary care physicians’ knowledge in diagnosing and managing migraine should extend from medical school student to on-the-job training for attending physicians, according to Dr. Mia Minen, who presented results of a comprehensive survey of primary care physicians’ knowledge about migraine at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.
Primary care physicians were unsure about when it is best to perform imaging in migraine patients and what kinds of medications are associated with medication overuse headache, said Dr. Minen of the department of neurology at NYU Langone Medical Center. She suggested that a wide range of physicians, including ob.gyns and emergency physicians, could benefit from better knowledge of migraine.
That position was echoed in an interview with Dr. Peter Goadsby of King’s College London and the University of California, San Francisco, who noted that a bigger headache curriculum in medical school and residencies, as well as more on-the-job education, would help greatly.