Familial hemiplegic migraine in developmental age: report of two cases

The authors report two cases of a particular type of migraine with aura, known as familial hemiplegic migraine (FHM). According to the International Headache Society (IHS) diagnostic criteria, the FHM can be diagnosed with the exception of organic causes, in a patient with migraine with aura including emiparesis of anything severity and with an end occurring a member of the family with similarity in the attach pattern. The two clinical cases reported clearly show these features and they can be considered exemplary for this type of pathology. This rare type of migraine has an unknown etiology, it seems to depend on a decreases of cerebral blood flow originative on the occipital lobe, over the subsequentially spreading anteriory region temporal and parietal lobe. The hypoperfusion with the next following neural ischemia is related to the variation of blood flow and/or "the spreading depression" supported by Leao and Olesen recently. We wanted to show these two cases so that the psychiatrist, the pediatrician, and the neurologist can be able to refer parents to the right approach, considering possibility of a pathology rare but benign; this is the FHM.