Overview
The Headache Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is the largest pediatric headache center in the United States with national and international recognition. Established in 1996, the Headache Center was organized as a multidisciplinary clinic -- combining child neurology with child psychology and nursing -- to diagnose, treat and manage children with headache disorders.
Our medical team sees children with a variety of headache complaints, including migraines, migraines with auras and tension-type headaches. These patients are diagnosed using the International Classification of Headache Disorders, which was developed by the International Headache Society.
The Headache Center team uses a multidisciplinary approach to treat headache disorders in children and teens. These treatment strategies include:
- Abortive therapy for individual headache episodes, using migraine-proven treatments
- Preventive therapy
- Behavioral medicine using lifestyle changes
A detailed questionnaire about the patient's headache has been developed by our team. This is a proven tool in helping assess the level of disability caused by the headache disorder, as well as identifying successful treatment outcomes. The information gathered from this questionnaire is then put into an electronic medical record.
A referral from your child's doctor is needed to see the Headache Center team. Care continues until the headaches are well controlled and no longer a problem. Headache management is then returned to your child's primary care physician, but the Headache Center team remains available to families as needed.
The Headache Center at Cincinnati Children's has also been designed to develop and expand research into childhood headache disorders by examining new treatment options, improved characterization of childhood headache and response patterns, and understanding the genetic pathophysiology of childhood headaches.
The Headache Center established the first pediatric fellowship for the study of childhood headaches in the country.
