Intensive community pharmacy intervention had little impact on triptan consumption: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of an intensive pharmaceutical care campaign targeting inappropriate use of triptans. DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial. SETTING: 22 community pharmacies in the County of Funen, Denmark. SUBJECTS: A total of 1123 triptan users at intervention pharmacies and 1340 at control pharmacies. INTERVENTION: Intervention pharmacy staff received information on migraine and other types of headache, detection of inappropriate triptan use and other drug-related problems, and techniques for establishing a dialogue with patients. Intervention consisted of a folder and a structured dialogue with the pharmacy staff. The folder included questions aimed at detecting overuse and inappropriate triptan use. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Change in average triptan consumption in doses per month measured by means of a prescription database with information on all purchases of reimbursed drugs at the level of the individual patient. RESULTS: Overall, intervention had no statistically significant short-term impact on patients' consumption of triptans either among incident users (intervention/control ratio 1.02; 95% confidence interval 0.95 to 1.12), or among prevalent users (1.02; 0.97 to 1.08). No effects were observed after 6 and 9 months, apart from a possible borderline effect after 9 months among prevalent users with intermediate triptan consumption (0.93; 0.87 to 1.00). CONCLUSION: The pharmaceutical care campaign did not reduce the use of triptans.