I became interested in the topic of severe headaches and migraines after my two daughters experienced severe headaches but were not diagnoised as having migraines until they were teenagers. This weeks assignment gave me reason to revisit migraines and the severity of pain that children experience.
According to research at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, it has been identified that migraines affect more than 6 million children and adolescents in the United States adn causes them to miss nearly 130,000 days of school every two weeks. I do not recall my children experiencing this type of affect during their years in school, however I do remember that they were often told by phyisicians to wear reading glasses to reduce the pressure on thier eyes,(they did not or do not now where prescribed glasses).
The study did reveal that pediatric migraines are one of the five most prevalent childhood disorders in the United States. The negative impact of migraines on overall quality of life is similar to childhood cancer, heart disease and rheumatic disease.
Since the research has been establishiment nearly 6,000 children with the complaint of headaches have been seen. A standardized diagnosis using the International Classification of Headache Disorders, Second Editon, was established using a detailed questionnaire about the child's headache, and a computer-based database to accumulate medical information as well as response rate was designed and is continually updated.
Treatment strategies include acute therapy for individual headache episodes and psychological intervention including feedback assisted relaxation training as wellas behavior adjustments. The multidisplinary approach has been demonstrated to be highly effective, not ony in the standard methods of measuring outcome, but also in using tools developed and validated at Cincinnati Children's to characterize disability and quality of life.
Upon obtaining this information, I am going to communicate this to my children so that they can have information for reference if their children ever experience severe headaches.
Reference
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Center, 2014. www.cincinnatichildrens.org/service/h/headache-center/about/
Hi Patricia! I absolutely love your post! I have a 7 year old daughter that has been suffering from migraines since the age of 3! We still have not pinpointed what it is! They say that it could be allergies, but that is not for certain. We have tried watching what she eats, allergy tests, even giving her medicine when she feels a headache coming on. I feel so bad for her when she gets them because all she does is lay around for 3 days until she feels better. I PRAY that she grows out of it.!!!
ReplyDeletePatricia this was very interesting. My daughter is 6 and for the past 2 years she has experienced severe headaches. I've given her medication, such as children's tynelol or motrin, but when they persist I had to take her to the hospital. Each time she has complained of a headache they have linked it back to an infection, (strep or urinary track infection), I was told her headaches comes from infections that have set in and her body cannot fight them off.
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