Advances in the active treatment of migraines

Title : Advances in the active treatment of migraines

Abstract:

Headaches are one of the most frequent disorders of the nervous central system. Around 50% of the adults worldwide have had a headache in the last year, and among them 30% describe it as migraine. Up to a 4% of the headache sufferers present 15 or more days of pain per month. Migraine, specially when it is chronic, can be complicate to treat successfully. The most common therapeutic strategy is the pharmacological, in this line there are many drugs developed with doubtful effectiveness. The research in migraine and other chronic pain conditions now a days is being focused in the modifiable factors that could be influencing the patients triggering or maintaining their pain. One of this factors identified has been physical activity levels. We now that sendentary people tend to have more headaches than more active people. Among conservative and non-pharmacological strategies the biobehavioural interventions are proposed, engaging Psychologists and Physical Therapists in the treatment of migraine patients. Using cognitive-behavioral therapy for stress management from the psychological area and a biobehavioral Physical therapy approach seems an appropriate approach since they will influence over some of the modifiable factors. One of the strategies included in the biobehavioral approach of Physical Therapy is exercise. In this presentation the results of a systematic review and meta-analyses regarding the exercise used as part of the therapy for migraine patients will be presented.

Biography:

Dr. Alba Paris-Alemany, MD, PT, Ph.D. is an Associate professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her expertise is orofacial and craniofacial pain, and craniomandibular and vestibular disorders. She has done clinical practice for more than 14 years in that specialized field at FisioCranioClinic, Madrid. She has been teaching in pre-graduate and post-graduate programs of Physical Therapy since 2013 and now continues her teaching at the Complutense University of Madrid. She belongs to the Research Group Motion in Brains where she has developed most part of her research. Her research streams are related to chronic pain management, movement representation, craniofacial pain, temporomandibular disorders, and dizziness. She has published more than 50 scientific articles in indexed international journals. She usually peer-reviews and has edited two special issues. She is a member of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), and secretary of the Physical Therapy group at the Spanish Society of Pain (SED). In addition, she is a member of the teaching team at the Institute of Neuroscience and Craniofacial Pain (INDCRAN) in Spain, a post-graduate school that offers courses for physical therapists on the topic of cervico-craniofacial pain and disorders.