Quality of clinical guidelines in pediatric headache

Background Headache is a very common complaint in children, and can have a profound impact on school performance [1], being the major cause of absence from school [2], and interfering with other daily activities [3]. The studies based on parental reports may be an unreliable source of information on the frequency of headache in young children; in fact, it has been suggested that almost 36% of the parents of children with headache are unaware of the headache [4]. In any case, the increased incidence over the last 30 years probably reflects the significant changes in children’s lifestyles. Given the elevated prevalence and the associated high degree of disability, it is not surprising that headache represents an important public health issue with considerable costs for the National Health Care System (NHCS), although, as children are not directly involved in the productivity process, it is not so easy to quantify the enormous, both, direct and indirect NHCS costs in this population [5].