The relationship of migraine with smartphone use

INTRODUCTION: It was aimed to determine the existence of a relationship between smartphone use and the severity and frequency of attacks of migraine in patients diagnosed with migraine who were admitted to the emergency department of a university hospital with the complaint of headache by using the survey method. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Migraine patients who came to the emergency department with headache in the last 1 year, were retrospectively analyzed. Afterwards, 119 patients who were readmitted within 3 months from this patient group were included in the survey study. All patients were asked about their preferences for smartphone use, duration of phone use, and whether they had received migraine treatment previously. The severity of pain was determined according to the visual analog scale. RESULTS: The migraine attacks of 38 patients with drug use were observed 7.65 times on average in a year. In the group without drug use, they were observed 9.80 times on average in a year. While the number of patients, who preferred talking as a preference for smartphone use, was 35 (29.4%), 7 (5.8%) patients preferred messaging, 10 (8.4%) patients preferred playing games, and 67 (56.3%) patients preferred surfing social media — the internet. No significant relationship was found between the severity of migraine pain and the preference for phone use (p = 0.08) (Tab.2). CONCLUSIONS: There is a need for more comprehensive experimental and epidemiological studies to confirm the relationship between migraine severity and the devices with high-frequency electromagnetic areas such as smartphones.