Abstract text (incl. figure legends and references)

Background and objective. Chronic migraine (CM) is defined in the third edition of the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD-3) as the presence of headaches on 15 days or more in a month, at least 8 days showing the migraine phenotype, for more than 3 months. CM affects from 0.6% to 1.8% of children and adolescents and determines a decrease of the quality of life. Aim of this study is to analyze the type of symptomatic drugs used and their efficacy for the treatment of acute migraine attacks in pediatric patients with CM.

Methods. We conducted a prospective study by selecting pediatric patients diagnosed with CM in our Department. We administered a questionnaire to the parents of all our pediatric patients with CM according to ICHD-3; questions were focused on symptomatic drugs used for acute migraine attacks and their effectiveness.

Results. For the final analysis we considered 91 patients with CM. Only two patients responded to the initial therapy with acetaminophen and only 31 % improved with ibuprofen. Fiftythree % of patients had relief with second-line NSAIDs drugs like ketoprofen, indomethacin, naproxen. Fifty one % of patients did not respond to more than three drugs and 16 % were resistant to all acute treatments. All patients underwent prophylaxis therapy.

Conclusions. In our study we have shown that the drugs for acute attack are not very effective in patients with CM and that some patients do not respond to any acute treatment.