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Abusive Head Trauma

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Pediatric Neurosurgery for Clinicians

Abstract

Abusive head trauma (AHT) is the most common cause of traumatic brain injury in infants with significant mortality and neurological morbidity. The mechanism of trauma usually involves forcefully and violently shaking of the infant, impact, or a combination of both. Assessments of child abuse involve a multidisciplinary approach. It is important the clinicians to be more involved in AHT cases, in terms of correct assessment of the cause of injury and to remove the abuser from contact with children in the future. The significance of imaging is to diagnose the injury as soon as possible for timely treatment and complications avoidance. MRI is more appropriate when the child is in stable condition, to investigate for some additional injuries that might have been missed, like spine injuries.

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Correspondence to Georgios Alexiou .

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Alexiou, G., Kafritsas, G., Prodromou, N. (2022). Abusive Head Trauma. In: Alexiou, G., Prodromou, N. (eds) Pediatric Neurosurgery for Clinicians. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80522-7_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80522-7_26

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-80521-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-80522-7

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