Jessica Ailani, MD: Continuing to Improve Acute Migraine Care

“I think it’s a really exciting time in migraine. We’re putting all this focus and attention into all these new products coming out, but I believe it’s really important that we continue to have conversations with our patients about how their medication is working for them.”

Notably, one of the biggest risk factors for a patient with episodic migraine to progress to chronic migraine is having a medication that is relatively ineffective. Unfortunately, this is the case for many patients with migraine.

While the recent approval of preventive agents like calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) inhibitors have really excited many headache specialists, there still remains an urgent need to care for acute care of the condition. For Jessica Ailani, MD, the director of the MedStar Georgetown University Hospital Headache Center, keeping the conversation with patients open and ongoing is especially important for physicians.

At the American Headache Society’s 2018 Scottsdale Headache Symposium in Arizona, Ailani sat with NeurologyLive to discuss the development of acute care options for patients to improve their quality of life and the management of their condition.