About 10% of children ages 5 to 15 and up to 28% of teenagers — mostly girls — experience migraine symptoms. It’s one of the top five most frequently diagnosed pediatric conditions. A migraine can mean missed school and extracurricular activities. Pediatric migraine makes it tough to enjoy being a kid.

Pediatric migraine treatments are advancing through research and clinical trials. As pediatric migraine researchers, our physicians have access to innovative treatments before they are widely available. Once a treatment is approved for wide use, many times our neurologists have been working with it for months or years.

Pediatric migraine symptoms are similar to that of adult migraine attacks, including severe headache pain, nausea and sensitivity to light.

Types of Migraine

• Episodic migraine with or without aura. Migraine without aura is the most common type of migraine, which occurs less than 15 days a month. Migraine with aura occurs in about 25% of children. An aura is an unusual sensation (usually visual) that occurs before or during the migraine attack.
• Chronic migraine is defined by a child having headache pain for at least 15 days a month, with at least eight days qualifying as migraine attacks, causing severe disruption of daily activities. This affects about 2% of children with migraine.
• Abdominal migraine is not associated with head pain but rather nonspecific nausea and/or vomiting. As the child ages, it may progress to more typical migraine with head pain.
• Vestibular migraine can cause dizziness and balance issues.

Common Childhood Migraine Triggers

• Stress
• Lack of sleep
• Caffeine
• Dehydration
• Environmental factors, such as bright lights, strong smells or loud noise

Helping Control Your Child’s Migraines

At Norton Children’s Neuroscience Institute, we believe your child deserves to be migraine-free and able to enjoy life just like any other kid. Our multidisciplinary team, which includes pediatric headache medicine physicians and psychologists, specializes in diagnosing and designing migraine treatment plans for children and teenagers.

We are dedicated to working together to determine what’s causing your child’s migraine symptoms and creating a treatment plan that minimizes the risk for migraine attacks. We offer a variety of treatments tailored to your child’s individual needs. These include some of the latest approved treatments to help prevent migraine as well as rescue medications.

We will conduct a thorough medical history and exam, and continue to evaluate your child at regular visits to monitor their migraine attacks and quality of life.

Our goals for successful treatment to control your child’s migraine headaches:

• Reduce the frequency of migraine attacks
• Shorten the duration and lessen the severity of each episode
• Decrease the days that pain medication is used to treat migraine
• No missed school or extracurricular activities because of migraine pain
• Create an action plan that can reduce anxiety when your child feels a migraine attack coming