Evaluation of brain CT scan in children with chronic and recurrent headache in kashan in the year 1996

Background and

Since headache is one of the common problems in children and adolescents and only a minority of them have a life threatening intracranial lesions and performing brain ÇT scan in many of such cases is costly, therefore it was decided to evaluate the findings of brain ÇT scan of children with chronic and recurrent headache.

This study was performed on 300 children of 5-15 years of age with a complaint of chronic recurrenthead-ache in kashan in 1999. History of present illness, physical and neurological examinations and also brain ÇT scan was done. Data were recorded in a special questionnaires and analyzed statistically.

Patients under study comprised of 53.3% girls and 46.7% boys with mean age of 10.3 ± 2.85. The most common type of headache was migraine with the frequency of 45.3%. brain ÇT scan was normal in 98% of the patients and only six patients(2%) had abnormal brain ÇT scan. Âll the patients with abnormal neurological findings had also abnormal brain ÇT scan (sensitivity=100%), and all the patients with normal neurological examinations had a normal brain ÇT scan (specificity=100%) the correlation between physical finding and brain ÇT scan was 100%. Çonclusion: Performing brain ÇT scan is not necessary in all children with chronic and recurrent headache, and it is only recommended in patients with positive findings on physical or neurological examinations.