Migraine in the Pediatric Population

Migraine is one of the largest chronic illnesses of childhood, one of the most disabling, and one of the most underrecognized diseases of childhood:

• Before puberty, 6% to 7% of boys and girls have headache
• During adolescence into young adulthood, we start seeing more females than males having migraine, but overall prevalence is somewhere around 10%
• Upwards of 1 out of 4 young women in the post high school age range to early 20s have diagnosis of migraine

How to diagnose?

• Kids <6, we involve the parents quite a bit in the history taking
• A family history of migraine is certainly a high suspicion indicator for potentially having migraines as a young child
• Migraine is a genetically based disease: it is known to run in families
• We do a lot of drawings, pain drawings
• We do individualized, child-oriented type of simple questions to get at symptoms
• We might do a few more imaging studies in a young child where we aren’t quite sure of the history as we would in adolescent
• As children develop they obviously are better at self-awareness and describing their symptoms.