Kids and Migraines

The answer is C.

If you guessed having kids draw pictures, you're right. That's the new tool doctors are being urged to use to help diagnose migraine headaches among children.

Scientists at Tufts University and the University of Wisconsin asked children to draw pictures that represented their headaches and then compared the contents of the pictures with the diagnoses made by physicians later on.

In the journal Pediatrics, the researchers wrote that the children -- who ranged from 4 to 19 years old -- produced "dramatic and insightful headache drawings." More importantly, when the drawings contained images that were consistent with a migraine -- such as a head being hit by a baseball bat or a person playing a drum set inside the head -- the art work correctly predicted that the doctor would diagnose migraine headaches in 87 percent of the cases.

The research team urged doctors to use drawings as an effective and inexpensive part of the process of diagnosing what sort of headache is affecting a child, and therefore what treatment is appropriate.

March 16, 2002