Children and Young Adult Headache Disorders : A Clinical Guide

"Doc, I am not worried about my seizures because my family at home and friends at school are there to help. When I have a seizure, it goes away but oh my headaches, I must live my life through these headaches and my life never stops during my headache and I must keep on doing things. Can you make these headaches go away"? -Patient diaries Everybody needs to hear that more than one million school days are missed in two weeks alone due to headaches and it is not school avoidance but a true medical disorder effecting our children. This is a challenging task to demystify subjective nature of ailment plagued with sense of familiarity. I felt this unmet need and this motivated me to write this book. This book describes historical journey from antiquity to present times, leading to our understanding of headache disorders. Children are not young adults, they may have different clinical presentation of similar disease. Many children have "non-headache" component of migraine equivalent syndromes which are either poorly recognized or under diagnosed. In this book, I focused on headache disorders in children and unique approach needed to recognize and manage these conditions. This book describes my health care philosophy i.e. managing common yet high morbidity causing conditions through awareness and education. This book is written for health care providers and for any one who suffers from headache syndromes.