Abstract

MOSQUERA, María S  and  MARTINO, Gabriel H. Children and adolescent's drawing for the diagnosis of migraine. Arch. argent. pediatr. [online]. 2008, vol.106, n.1, pp.11-18. ISSN 0325-0075.

Introduction. Migraine is frequent in children. Children's drawings of their symptoms can help to identify it. Objective. To evaluate the accuracy of children's drawings to identify migraine in those who suffer from headache. Population, materials and methods. We evaluated 48 patients aged 5 to 19 years, assisted for headache. In all cases they were asked to draw what happened to them before and during the episode, and then the drawing was analyzed by a pediatric neurologist ("artistic diagnosis"). Afterwards, all were evaluated by another pediatric neurologist ("clinical diagnosis"). Sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp), negative (NPV) and positive (PPV) predictive values of the "artistic diagnosis" to predict "clinical diagnosis" were calculated. Possible interaction of age, Intellectual Standard Score (ISS), maternal education and previous contact with a neurologist was evaluated by logistic regression. Results. After controlling by those factors, the "artistic diagnosis" was found to be an independent predictor of the "clinical diagnosis" of migraine (p < 0.01, OR: 23), achieving Se: 69,6%, Sp: 88%, PPV: 84,2% and NPV: 75,9. The performance was still better when only subjects with ISS ≥ 70 were considered. Conclusion. Children tend to communicate their symptoms more effectively through drawings than verbally. The "artistic diagnosis" was accurate to predict the "clinical diagnosis" of migraine.

Keywords : Migraine; Diagnosis; Headache; child; Drawing.

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