More children are going to the emergency department with headaches, but fewer of them are receiving CT exams. Those were the findings of a new study that will be presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics 2016 National Conference & Exhibition in San Francisco.

In the U.S., 10.3 million children between ages five and 17 are prone to headaches, according to the National Headache Foundation. About 15 percent of them have tension-type headaches and 5 percent are dealing with migraines.

Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh evaluated data from their own EHR to assess how often pediatric patients between ages four and 20 visited the emergency department for headache pain between 2007 and 2014.
They randomly chose 50 headache visits per year and studied the patient data including age, gender, race, and ethnicity. They also looked at each patient’s main compliant, whether they had a head injury within 48 hours and their history of concussion and past medical history.

The data revealed that the pediatric emergency department visits for headaches doubled from 2 percent to 4 percent within the time frame. The admission rate for children with headaches increased from 10 percent to 24 percent.

Even though more children are visiting the emergency department, fewer CT exams are being performed. Instead, physicians are prescribing more medications for children than they have in the past.

The researchers concluded that these findings indicate a “significantly increased” burden on both the health care system and patients. The patients and parents often have to miss school and work because of chronic headaches.

The next step is to find out the reasons why more children are coming to the emergency department with headaches. More research is also needed to uncover more effective treatment strategies for these children.

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