Stratified Care

MIDAS and DISC study

Physicians assess a patient’s migraine, and prescribe initial treatment based on the severity of symptoms and degree of disability and the individual treatment needs of the patient.

Impact tools such as MIDAS have been proposed as stratification tools for this approach, with the level of the patient’s disability used to determine the appropriate treatment. Allowing for health considerations and patient preferences, those patients with more severe and disabling attacks would generally be prescribed highly effective, migraine-specific medications at the onset of symptoms, while those with less severe attacks may only require simple analgesics or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Click here to view MIDAS Questionnaire.

The large-scale DISC study showed that a stratified-care approach that utilised the MIDAS impact tool was superior to step-care approaches in the treatment of migraine.