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
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.
Our study showed that (i) in children, RES is a highly specific sign for migraine. In addition, the evidence of an association of RES with some migraine features partially provoked by the parasympathetic system supports the hypothesis of a shared pathophysiological background (e.g. via the activation of the trigeminal-autonomic reflex).
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