Nonpharmacologic treatment of chronic headache: prediction of outcome

We studied the ability of headache history, a 4-week headache diary, standard psychological tests, and laboratory measures of psychophysiologic responses to stress to predict the outcome of relaxation therapy and biofeedback for three types of chronic headache. Using canonical discriminant function analyses, each potential predictor set was tested separately, and all four were tested together. Information from the headache history alone correctly classified 89 to 95% of patients as improved or unimproved. No other single predictor set was consistently better than headache history. When all four predictor sets were combined, prediction improved; 93 to 100% of patients were correctly classified.