Abusive Head Trauma

Abusive Head Trauma (AHT)

  • AHT is unique form of inflicted intracranial injury first described Caffey (1946, 1972) and Guthkelch (1971) as ‘Whiplash Shaken Infant Syndrome’, later called ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’;
  • Causes more subdural hemorrhage (SDH) in young children than motor vehicle collisions; most common cause of fatal child abuse;
  • Definition expanded in 2009 beyond just shaking as a mechanism; contact and/or rotational injuries;
  • The clinical presenting features include severe head injury; death; less severe trauma with an unexplained mechanism; unsuspected finding on imaging or assessment for macrocephaly, developmental delay, seizures or other neurologic concerns; or discovery during the workup as a sibling of an abused child. The clinical findings include neurologic signs and symptoms such as irritability/lethargy, altered mental status, seizures, respiratory compromise and apnea, fractures, varying degrees of pattern marks or bruises in unusual locations, vomiting and poor feeding;
  • Patterns noted in child, family and perpetrator characteristics.

REFERENCES:

  • Choudhary et al., 2018
  • Narang et al., 2020

CHAMP Education for Child Abuse Medical Providers

Accessible Version

Abusive Head Trauma is a unique form of inflicted intracranial injury first described Caffey (1946, 1972) and Guthkelch (1971) as ‘Whiplash Shaken Infant Syndrome’, later called ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’; AHT causes more subdural hemorrhage (SDH) in young children than motor vehicle collisions; and is the most common cause of fatal child abuse; the definition was expanded in 2009 beyond just shaking as a mechanism to take into account both contact and/or rotational injuries; The clinical presenting features include severe head injury; death; less severe trauma with an unexplained mechanism; unsuspected finding on imaging or assessment for macrocephaly, developmental delay, seizures or other neurologic concerns; or discovery during the workup as a sibling of an abused child. The clinical findings include neurologic signs and symptoms such as irritability/lethargy, altered mental status, seizures, respiratory compromise and apnea, fractures, varying degrees of pattern marks or bruises in unusual locations, vomiting and poor feeding; There have been patterns noted in child, family and perpetrator characteristics.