Brams introduced the term abdominal migraine
nearly a century ago, in 1922. He believed the condition
was under-diagnosed by gastroenterologists and neurologists.
The onset of abdominal pain was described
as abrupt, recurrent, and persistent for 3 to 4 days and
ending just as abruptly. The interval between attacks
of pain was symptom free (Brams, 1922). Dignan et al.
(2001) thought it was common for pediatric abdominal
pain to give way to migraine headaches. They tracked
54 children with AM into young adulthood and found
that 70% were present or past sufferers of migraine
headaches, compared with only 20% of matched control
subjects. Other researchers suggest that AM, cyclic vomiting
syndrome, and migraine headache comprise a continuum
of a single disorder and that affected individuals
often progress from one clinical symptom to another
(Abu-Arafeh& Russell, 2002). Cyclic vomiting syndrome
and AM have been used interchangeably, but there are
significant differences to support their separation,
mainly the presence or absence of migraine headache
(Catto-Smith & Ranuh, 2003)