International headache society criteria and childhood headache

The objective of this study was to determine whether the intuitive clinical diagnosis of a headache type made by paediatric neurologists would also have fulfilled International Headache Society (IHS) criteria for that type. Clinical information was recorded on data sheets. The neurologists made clinical diagnoses without referring to a fixed set of criteria. An independent physician then used the information on the data sheets to classify the child's headache by IHS criteria. Complete data sheets were available for 72 children, aged between four and 18 years. The intuitive clinical diagnosis was completely concordant with the criterion diagnosis of the IHS in 61 per cent, partially concordant in 31 per cent and at complete variance in 8 per cent. These data suggest that the IHS criteria can be applied to a majority of children in a referral-based population such as this, but that minor revisions to the criteria are necessary to make them even more applicable to children.