Headache in pediatric practice: multifactor analysis of clinical and social predictors

The purpose of this work is to define the clinical and social predictors of headaches in children and adolescents. Material and Methods. We performed clinical examination of children and adolescents, which included studying their symptoms, anamnesis, somatic and neurological objective signs, survey using our original questionnaire and survey in the framework of an international project to study headaches «World Children and Adolescent Headache Project». The type of headache was diagnosed using international diagnostic criteria of the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition (beta release). As a result of our study, we obtained the data about the most significant lifestyle factors (among those studied) influencing the number of days with headache per month, calculated linear coefficients and a predicting mathematical model for children. The sensitivity of the model for the prognosis of chronic tension type headache is 63%, specificity — 81 %. Conclusion. In this paper we describe criteria for the prognosis of primary headaches in patients aged from 8 to 18 years old.