What Is The Shaken Baby Syndrome?
Abusive head injury refers to the traumatic brain injury inflicted on an infant or young child and is used in this discussion to encompass all mechanisms of inflicted traumatic brain injury. Because the investigation into whether an injury is intentional or unintentional is often complicated by caretakers providing a false history or no history at all to explain a childs injury, understanding mechanisms of head injury as revealed by the pathological findings may assist in determination of how the injury was caused. Abusive head injuries are the most common cause of death in child abuse. These injuries are most common in infants under one year old but the same injuries can be seen in children as old as age 4 or 5 years. Shaken Baby Syndrome is one form of abusive head injury in which a child is submitted to severe repetitive acceleration-deceleration forces with or without blunt impact to the head that result in a characteristic pattern of injuries which may include retinal hemorrhages,
