An Anecdotal Case of Treatment of Headache Attributed to Airplane Travel: Are Triptans an Option?

Successful Treatment of Airplane Headache with Rizatriptan: Case Report

“…Earlier it was assumed that prophylactic drug management of AH should be appropriately timed depending on the time of AH occurrence (during take-off, landing, or both), depending on the duration of air travel, and depending on the peak action of prophylactic medication [8, 12]. According to a systemic review, onset of AH was found mostly during the descending phase in 210 patients ( n = 210/275), followed by the ascending phase in 33 patients ( n = 33/275), and only 18 patients ( n = 18/275) were found to report it both during descending and ascending phases [4].…”

“…The simplest regimen of triptan use is in the cases of AH pain occurrence only during the take-off – triptans are reported to be the most effective when taken 30 min before a flight [8, 12]. In cases of AH pain occurrence during landing or even during both take-off and landing, it needs to be taken into account also the flight duration and drug pharmacokinetics.…”

“…When prescribing rizatriptan 30 min before the flight, we used the experience of successful use of triptans about 30 min before the flight for prevention of pain attacks during ascending [8, 12]. Most likely, based on the flight duration (time period between rizatriptan intake before the take-off and time of AH pain onset during the plane descending was a little over 2.5 h), rizatriptan blood concentration in our patients at the time of descending had already decreased to a critical level, insufficient to prevent AH pain attack during the descending phase.…”

Exploring headache attributed to airplane travel

“…The individuals presented in this report took various triptans: zolmitriptan, eletriptan, sumatriptan, and naratriptan [25]. In addition, other anecdotal cases of triptan use for AH have been reported in the literature [25,53,68], which collectively show that triptans have been effective and safe, with reasonable patient satisfaction. There has still been no randomized clinical trial for the use of triptans for AH.…”

“…In 2019, an anecdotal paper was published based on a 28-year-old man [68] who contacted the PhD fellow of this dissertation (Sebastian Bao Dinh Bui) via Facebook after reading the published papers based on Study 1-3 [1][2][3]. Despite only traveling 1-…”