Abstract
Headache is a frequent complaint in childhood and adolescence, and its prevalence increases with age. Although the most common causes of chronic or recurrent headaches in this group are benign primary headaches, migraine, and TTH, they may have a significant impact in children’s lives, disrupting school and social activities.
Appropriate management requires an individually tailored strategy giving due consideration to both nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic treatments. Reassurance, education, and information of patients and family are important intervention measures. Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that childhood migraine tends to improve with age and early diagnosis and intervention may be important to avoid persistence of symptoms.
In migraine, acetaminophen and ibuprofen are effective in the acute treatment of the attacks, but oral therapy can fail due to vomiting. Nasal sumatriptan, nasal zolmitriptan, and oral almotriptan have been approved for use in patients above 11 years of age. Supplementary measures such as rest in a quiet, darkened room are recommended. In chronic TTH, patients should be advised to take acute therapy only when the pain is severe, in order to avoid analgesic overuse.
Prophylactic management of migraine and TTH should include strategies relating to daily habits, family, school, and leisure-time activities. Nonpharmacologic treatments include relaxation training, biofeedback, cognitive-behavioral therapy, other psychotherapeutic approaches, or combinations of these treatments. Pharmaco-prophylaxis is indicated if headache are frequent and severe despite lifestyle modifications. Although many prophylactic medications have been tried in pediatric migraine, there are only a few medications that have been studied in controlled trials (particularly flunarizine and topiramate).
Multidisciplinary treatment is an effective strategy for children and adolescents with improvement of multiple outcome variants including frequency and severity of headache and school days missed because of headache.
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Wöber-Bingöl, Ç., Martins, I.P. (2011). Managing Headache in Young People. In: Martelletti, P., Steiner, T.J. (eds) Handbook of Headache. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1700-9_45
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1700-9_45
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