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