Clinical Studies of Sinus Headache in Children

Lee, Eun Ah; Lee, Chang Woo; Choi, Doo Young

Abstract

PURPOSE
Headache is a common reason for children to seek medical care. There are many causes of headaches in children, such as migraine and its variants, tension, intracranial masses, and sinusitis. A high frequency of diagnosis of sinus headache, which specialists consider to be relatively rare, raises the possibility that migraine and other headache types are sometimes mistaken for sinus headache. This report studied the clinical characteristics of sinus headache in the pediatric population.
METHODS
We analyzed the clinical manifestations of 25 patients who had sinusitis in 97 children whose chief complain was headache. The clinical manifestation involved location, type, frequency and associated symptoms of headache, frequency of upper respiratory tract infection(URI), and family history of migraine.
RESULTS
There were eight cases of organic headaches, which were two cases of brain tumor, two cases of arachnoid cyst, one case of Moyamoya disease, one case of brain abscess and two cases of eye problems. The mean age of patients who had sinus headaches was 8.2 years. The most common age group was between 6 and 11 years(76%). The most common location of sinus headache was the frontal area in 10 cases(40%). And the most common pattern of headache was dull and steady pain in 16 cases(64%). The most common associate symptom of headache were gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain in 13 cases(52%). There were 13(52%) of patients who had no history of frequent URI. There were also seven(28%) patients who had a family history of migraines.
CONCLUSION
Considered in aggregate, the data show that the occurrence of sinus inflammation associated with a headache should neither trigger a diagnosis of sinus disease nor exclude a diagnosis of migraine. It should prompt diagnostic consideration of both conditions.