Are investigations anxiolytic or anxiogenic? A randomised controlled trial of neuroimaging to provide reassurance in chronic daily headache.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Aims were to investigate (a) whether neuroimaging in patients with chronic daily headache reassures patients or fails to reassure them and/or worsens outcome, impacting on service use, costs, health anxieties, and symptoms, and (b) whether this reassurance process occurs differentially in patients with different levels of psychological morbidity.

Methods

Design

randomised controlled trial; setting: headache clinic in secondary care, South London; participants: 150 patients fulfilling criteria for chronic daily headache, stratified using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS); intervention: treatment as usual or the offer of an MRI brain scan; main outcome measures: use of services, costs, and health anxiety.

Results

Seventy six patients we

SUBMITTER: Howard L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1739391 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature