Neuroradiological imaging in childhood headache

Headache is a common symptom in pediatric practice. evaluation and diagnosis of headache are very challenging by physicians. although there are a few reports about headache in childhood, it was shown that headache as the sign of intracranial pathologies in adults can be diagnosed by using radiological techniques. in this study we aimed to determine the etiology of headache, not accompanied by neurological symptoms, in childhood period by computerized tomography (ct) scan and magnetic resonance imaging (mri) in east anatolian region. a total number of 134 children with headache in childhood period (ranged in age from 3 to 15 years, the mean age 12.9±0.6years) were investigated by means of ct scan and mri. ct and mri scans were performed in 124 and 10 patients respectively within one year period.. mri was performed with 0,3 t equipment and ct was performed with multi–detector equipment. we found radiological abnormalities in ten patients (7.46%). from the ten abnormalities, 6 abnormalities were detected with ct and 4 with mri.we detected 5 patients with sinusitis, one patient with arachnoid cyst, one patient with demyelinated foci, one patient with lacunar infarct, one patient with communicant hydrocephalus and one patient with germ cell tumor. the most frequent radiological abnormality in children was sinusitis. although mri was applied to a small group the radiological abnormalities detected by mri were higher than those detected by ct scan. in conclusion, we observed that mri might be used in patients in childhood period who had complicated headache without neurological symptoms.