The Utility of the approach to Migraine Treatment Evaluation through the Visualization of HIT-6 and MIBS-4 on a Two-Dimensional Plane

Abstract

   The impact of migraines on patients is extremely high, yet headache medicine is not sufficiently widespread, partly due to a lack of patient awareness that they suffer from migraines. We attempted to enhance patientsʼ understanding of the impact of their migraines by visualizing their HIT-6 and MIBS-4 scores on a two-dimensional plane. We compared the understanding of impairment in 100 migraine patients between “numerical scores” and “scores plotted on a two-dimensional plane” using the Likert scale for HIT-6 and MIBS-4. The comparison between the two groups showed that the latter significantly improved patientsʼ understanding (Mann-Whitney U test: P＜0.001) ．These results indicate that visualization can help patients more clearly understand the degree of impairment．