Headaches-a common finding in children following head injury and concussions

An article in the Journal Pediatrics reports that headaches, a common complaint following a concussion or other traumatic brain injury can linger for up to a year following the injury.

Children who have sustained a concussion are more likely to develop headaches than children who have sustained other types of injuries according to the study.

While not entirely surprising, the results point to a difficult long-term problem for kids and their parents because adequate treatments are lacking, researchers say.

Headaches are a truly troubling problem for children because it can affect sleep, make it harder to concentrate and cause profound personality changes. Headaches can affect school performance and must be monitored by school personal.

The study tracked more than 400 children who had come into the emergency room with a brain injury -- 402 kids had a mild injury and 60 kids had a moderate or severe injury. The study authors compared these head-injury cases to kids who had come into the emergency room with an arm injury. Parents and children kept a diary of any headaches the kids reported for a year.

After three months, 43 out of every 100 kids who experienced a mild brain injury complained of headaches. Among kids with moderate or severe brain injuries, 37 out of every 100 complained of headaches.  It's unclear why the children with mild brain injury were more likely to have headaches than those who suffered more severe damage. In comparison, 26 out of every 100 kids who had an arm injury reported having headaches three months later.

The research also reported that girls were at a greater risk of suffering from post concussion headaches than boys. Girls who had a mild brain injury were more than twice as likely to have headaches as girls who had an arm injury, whereas boys had nearly similar rates of headaches regardless of the type of injury.