What do patients consider to be the most important outcomes for effectiveness studies on migraine treatment? Results of a Delphi study

Background The outcome measures most frequently used in studies on the effectiveness of migraine treatment are whether the patient is free of pain, nausea, and free of photophobia/phonophobia within two hours. However, no patient-centred outcome measures are available. Therefore, we performed an online Delphi procedure to compile a list of outcome measures deemed most important to migraine patients. Methods From a large database of migraine patients, we randomly selected 150 males and 150 females patients. We asked the open-ended question: ‘If a new medicine was developed for migraine attacks, what would you wish the effect of this medication to be?’ In the second and third rounds, we presented the answers of the first round and asked the patients to rate the importance of each item. Results The initial response rate was 56% (n = 169). In the subsequent rounds the response rates were 90% (n = 152), and 97% (n = 147), respectively. Patients wanted their attack medication to treat the headache within 30 min, to prevent the attack from getting worse, to ensure they could function properly within 1 h, and prevent the recurrence of symptoms during the same day. Conclusions The currently used outcome measures in migraine research do not sufficiently reflect the wishes of patients. Patients want the medication to work faster, to take away pain at an earlier stage, to make them able to function properly quickly, and to prevent recurrence. These aspects should be considered in future evaluation of new attack medication for migraine