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.