Migraine in children. The causes and treatment of migraine in children.
In the headaches in children, migraine headaches due to vasomotor disturbances are quite common, especially in school age, girls tend to catch this disease more than boys.
This disease has family nature and is usually localized on one side of the head, cyclical evolution with clinical symptoms are varied.
The Causes:
The origin of migraine is due to the elasticity of the blood vessels disorder of the brain, but the cause of vasodilation disorders is unclear. People only see some favorable factors. For example, this disease usually begins around puberty and has family nature, the mother has migraine, the daughter has, too.
Besides, the menstrual cycle (in girl) and other psychological factors, emotions also affect on the progress of the disease. In addition, some other factors such as food containing tyramine and phenylethylene (found in cow’s milk, eggs, cheese, chocolate, etc), allergenic factor cause migraine.
Common migraine
The disease usually begins after a strenuous activity, after infection or eating some foods such as milk, eggs, chocolate. With girl, it often appears before menstruation. Normally, before having headaches from several hours to some days, there will have a change in child’s mood, fatigue, loss of appetite and headaches appear.
Fierce suddenly pain, the pain’s position starts in the forehead on one side and sometimes, on both sides and then spread out the half or the whole head. In the pain, the child’s face is very pale, cold skin, patients feel that the temple is stretch, the blood vessels in his temples throbbed accompany with nausea, vomiting and epigastric pain. Besides, many patients also feel dizzy and glistening zigzag lights run ahead, but this type of visual disturbances only appear 10-20 times and then end.
Another feature is the child tends to have headaches more when exertion, exposure to strong light and noise, pain reduces when relaxing so, the child shows sign of photophobia and demands lying alone in the dark, does not want the other touch them. Now, if the child can sleep, the headache may be shorten and when getting up, the headaches finished, the body returns to normal, although, in some cases, when getting up, he still has a little headache and fatigue lasting until the next day.
The final characteristic is that this type of headache lasts from one to several hours. Without the fit, the child is normal and the number of occurring again with each patient is different.
Others types of migraine
Migraine of basilar artery
Common in girl’s puberty and menstruation, especially, the children have a family history of migraine. It starts with visual disturbances sides such as flashes point, decrease of vision, blurred vision and even loss of vision in both eyes, besides, some children have feeling disorder, speech impairment, dizziness, confusion consciousness. All these disorders appear before the headache from a few minutes to half an hour and then disappear as soon as the pain appears, pain in the occipital region and accompanied by nausea and vomiting.
Hemiplegic migraine
Suddenly, the children are paralytic and have disorders of sensation in a half-human, paralysis in the arm is worse than that one in the leg but, not facial paralysis. Coming with hemiplegic migraine is migraine in the opposite side to the paralyzed side. These symptoms also occur within a few minutes then end completely without sequel.
Abdominal migraine
Suddenly, the children have fierce pain in the epigastric region, around the navel, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, diarrhea stools. At the moment, the children have headaches but it is secret. These symptoms usually occur within a few hours then disappear. However, that can recur many times and make the parents worry and take them to test digestion and surgery, do all kinds of tests, but no disease is detected because a majority of the doctors and parents only pay attention to symptoms of abdominal pain without asking whether the children have headaches or not.
In short, the symptoms of migraine are various so, it is easy to confuse with other diseases in the abdomen such as appendicitis, stomach pain and diseases of the nervous system such as epilepsy, brain hemorrhage, brain tumors, etc. Therefore, you must exam carefully, especially, neurological examination, in addition, you must do some extra tests such as abdominal ultrasound, EEG, X-rays of the skull. With EEG, there are many cases that migraine expresses the waves like the epilepsy so you must do many times to eliminate the diseases.
The Treatment:
Symptomatic treatment with non-steroide painkillers such as aspirin, paracetamol, Voltaren combine with relaxing in the quiet place, if it is not better, we can cut the headache by ergotamine derivatives as Migwell, Gynergen. Prophylactic treatment when having at least 3 episodes per month or more by ergotamine drugs mentioned above. In addition, you can use serotonin antibiotic (Desernil), calcium channel blockers (Sibelium), beta-blockers (Propranolol). Note: restrict some kinds of foods can cause headaches in children such as chocolate, milk, eggs, chesse.
