Headache: what do children and mothers expect from pediatricians?

BACKGROUND: Headache is a frequent occurrence among children and adolescents, and one of the most common causes of medical consultation. While serious conditions presenting headache as the chief complaint are not common in the pediatric population, enormous sums are invested to perform very expensive and often unnecessary diagnostic investigations. Pediatricians should adopt a flexible and diversified diagnostic/therapeutic approach and, at the same time, should not forget to take into consideration the demands, expectations, and worries of children and their parents. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess simultaneously children's and mothers' expectations from the pediatric consultation concerning headache, and pediatricians' opinions about said expectations. In addition, we attempted to investigate mothers', children's, and pediatricians' opinions about symptomatic and prophylactic treatment of headache. METHOD: A total of 100 young headache sufferers, 50 were male and 50 were female, from 10 to 16 years of age, were enrolled in this study. Two diversified, self-administered, ad hoc questionnaires about their expectations from the pediatric treatment of headache and about symptomatic and prophylactic treatment were delivered to each patient and their mother, to which they responded separately. A third self-administered questionnaire was delivered to a sample of 50 pediatricians. RESULTS: Our study showed that children and their mothers sometimes have different expectations about the consultation of the pediatrician and of the headache specialist. Frequency of pain was the main reason for pediatric consultation for 70% of mothers, whereas only 2% of them (as opposed to what pediatricians believed) consulted the pediatrician because they were worried about a tumor. Moreover, a high percentage of children and mothers expected from the pediatric consultation to be reassured that it is not a serious illness and to find out the causes of headache (60% and 47%, and 45% and 62%, respectively). A total of 26% of children wanted to know the progression of headache in the future, but only 3% of mothers shared the same demand. With regard to their expectations, pediatricians agree only in part with children and their mothers. On the contrary, the majority of children (68%), mothers (49%), and pediatricians (90%) agree that a symptomatic treatment was necessary in the presence of a severe pain. In addition, 61% of children, 37% of mothers, and 74% of pediatricians believed that a prophylactic treatment was necessary when the pain is severe and long-lasting. CONCLUSION: Pediatricians sometimes do not consider sufficiently children's and mothers' wishes and expectations and, consequently, could limit the outcome of their diagnostic-therapeutic approach. This is particularly important because, in the developmental age, an accurate recognition of patients' and parents' expectations represents an essential requirement for a favorable outcome of the consultation.

Recurrent and chronic headaches in children below 6 years of age.

The objective was to determine the frequency of headache subtypes, according to International Headache Society (IHS) criteria, in a population of children below 6 years visiting a Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Headache in Youth. Medical records of the children below 6 years at their first visit, admitted for headache between 1997 and 2003, were studied. Headache was classified according to the IHS criteria 2004. Children with less than three headache attacks or less than 15 days of daily headache were excluded. We found 1598 medical records of children who visited our Headache Center in the study period. One hundred and five (6.5%) were children younger than 6 years. The mean age at the first medical control was 4.8+/-1.3 years (range 17-71 months). There were 59 males (56.1%) and 46 females (43.9%). The mean age at onset of headaches was 4.3 years (range 14-69 months). According to the IHS criteria we found 37 cases (35.2%) with migraine, 19 cases (18%) with episodic tension headache, 5 cases (4.8%) with chronic daily headache, 13 cases (12.4%) with primary stabbing headache, 18 cases (17.1%) with post-traumatic headache, 7 cases (6.6%) with other non-dangerous secondary headaches (otorhinolaryngological diseases, post-infectious headaches), 3 cases (2.85%) with dangerous headaches (Arnold-Chiari type 1 malformation, brain tumour) and 9 cases (8.6%) with unclassifiable headaches. Six children (5.7%) reported more than one headache subtype. The prevalence of dangerous headaches was higher than those in school age (chi(2)=4.70, p<0.05). Our study shows some differences in headaches in this population vs. school children. In fact at this age migraine is the most common headache, but we also found an increase of secondary causes among the chronic/recurrent and daily headaches, especially posttraumatic disorders and potentially dangerous headaches. Finally our study shows the highest prevalence of the idiopathic stabbing headache in pre-school children in comparison with other ages.

The prevalence of allodynia, osmophobia and red ear syndrome in the juvenile headache: preliminary data.

The aim of the study was to determine the frequency of clinical allodynia, osmophobia and red ear syndrome in a young population. Medical records of the children admitted for headache between 1 December 2004 and 31 March 2005 were consecutively studied. A questionnaire was used to find the prevalence of allodynia, osmophobia and red ear syndrome. We visited 96 children with headache. The range of age was 6-18 years. We classified migraine in 57%, other primary headaches in 25% and secondary headaches in about 18%. The presence of ipsilateral clinical allodynia was 14.5% in migraine, osmophobia in 20% of migraine and red ear syndrome in about 24% of migraine cases and they were absent in the other two headache groups. Our study shows that features like osmophobia, allodynia and red ear syndrome are not uncommon in migraine while they are absent in other types of headache.