Dr Abraham Nagy Highlights the Need to Educate on the Impact Headaches Can Have

Migraines and cluster headaches can have devastating consequences on people’s lives, and there is a need to educate the public about the impact these disorders can have, said Abraham Nagy, MD, chair of neurology at University of Las Vegas and director of Nevada Headache Institute.

Transcript

There are many types of headache—how much education is needed to help patients understand what type of headache they have and what the best treatment might be?

So, there are many, many kinds of headache disorders out there and I think one of the biggest illnesses that we have as clinicians is educating our own clinicians about headache types and that’s one of the big important aspects of the American Academy of Neurologist. We, as neurologists, become ambassadors for headache disorders to other care providers, and it would be wonderful if we can then have our other care providers help provide a baseline education.

It’s a very big limitation, but I think that migraine disorders and cluster headache disorders are becoming more understood by the public as neurologic disabilities that can have devastating consequences in people’s lives. For a very long time, headache disorders were thought of as nonconsequential events that could just be treated with a minimal line of care or something over the counter.

But now we’re realizing quite a lot more that this is, there’s a significant disability associated with these events, and we’re trying to make strides in educating the population about this.