Chronic daily headache in adolescence

Chronic daily headache (CDH) affects up to 4% of adults and between 1% and 2% of middle-school children.1 Children with CDH often have a history of episodic migraine or a family history of migraines. The headache characteristics in patients with CDH can vary between patients as well as within an individual patient. Their headaches may present as severe intermittent migraine attacks, intermittent low severity headaches, continuous headache pain, or as a combination of these headache types.2 This variation continues to make this condition remarkably challenging to understand and to treat. When the patient and his or her family are in the office, 3 main questions arise: why did this happen, how can we treat it, and when will it go away? Several studies have begun to address these questions, but these studies have often …