Dr. Zachary Roth, a resident in ophthalmology at Albany Medical Center in New York and his colleagues looked at 158 children under the age of 18 who were referred to ophthalmologists for frequent headaches. The researchers had noted that children complaining of frequent headaches were often ordered an eye exam. “In some pediatric ophthalmology practices, it’s a daily occurrence,” said Dr. Roth.  So, are eye problems a cause of childhood headaches? Roth’s study could not find any meaningful connection between diagnoses of vision problems and headaches. In fact, in three-quarters of the children studied, the headaches went away overtime, for those who received new glasses and for those who did not. “I think the take-away message is that it’s very unlikely for headaches to be caused by an eye problem. The experience of all the ophthalmologists we talked to is that it almost never seems to be related to the eyes, so it’s probably more fruitful to investigate other causes,” said Dr. Roth.

The study was presented at a recent American Academy of Ophthalmology conference. While it was not intended to look for causes of the headaches, there were several children in the study with family histories of migraine, as well as sinus problems and stress headaches…… NYTimes.com   11/19/12

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