Sentinel Injuries
Sentinel Injuries
- Infants who were definitely abused
- 55/200 (27.5%) had sentinel injuries
- Infants with intermediate concern of abuse
- 8/100 (8%) had sentinel injuries
- Non-abused infants
- 0/101 (0%) had sentinel injuries
Accessible Version
I'd like to share with you some of the data that was published by the Sheets et al. Group in 2013.
Because I do think that it highlights the association between bruising in infants, along with other sentinel injuries and their later diagnosis of physical abuse.
So in this study. Child abuse pediatrics team was asked to determine the likelihood of abuse in children.
It's an interesting study for a variety of reasons. And they have created a few categories after they completed their evaluation, either they determined that the children were definitely abused Or the infants had an intermediate concern of abuse or there was an intermediate concern of abuse about that particular infant. Then there was also a group of non-abused infants.
And you can see that in the group of infants who were definitely abused, 27.5% of them had sentinel injuries. In the next category, with the intermediate concern of abuse, 8% of those infants had sentinel injuries. And interestingly, in the non-abused category, meaning there was a medical mimic that was diagnosed or an accidental injury was detected, none of those children had sentinel injuries.