Approximately 12 million women in the US suffer from menstrual migraine, a common and disabling condition. Menstrual migraine is typically defined as a migraine headache that affects a woman each month starting two days before the menstrual period and continuing to the end of menstruation. It differs from nonmenstrual attacks of migraine, even in the same women, in the regularity of its timing and its greater severity. Compared with other times in the menstrual cycle, a migraine is more than twice as likely to occur during the first 3 days of menstruation and more than 3 times as likely to be severe. As part of the Oxford American Pain Library, this practical handbook is designed to serve as a concise yet authoritative resource on diagnosing and treating menstrual migraine. Tailored to the needs of busy health care professionals treating female patients in the primary care setting, the book focuses on essential clinical information for physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in family practice, internal medicine and OB/GYN. In addition to covering traditional clinical areas such as pathogenesis, co-morbidities, pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic treatments, the book also presents an array of practical tools and features such as screening tools for easy diagnosis, disability assessment tools, tips on best questions to ask, useful checklists and additional patient resource information. The handbook also provides valuable guidance on how to proceed should initial treatment efforts fail.
