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medpundit |
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003If the rest of the country reflected what happened in North Carolina recently, an estimated 1,300 U.S. children experienced severe or fatal head trauma from child abuse during the past year, a new study concludes. Of those, 1,200 were in the first year of their lives. That's quite a claim. And it has no basis in fact. The only thing the study can say with any certainty is that over the past two years 80 children in North Carolina were shaken hard enough to require hospitalization in an intensive care unit: "Keenan and colleagues identified all N.C. children ages 2 years and younger admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit in the state or who died from a brain injury in 2000 and 2001. Members of the team contacted charge nurses at each of the state's nine pediatric ICUs three times a week over the span, checked medical examiner and other records and even queried the three closest out-of-state pediatric ICUs about N.C. patients. They considered the injuries to be inflicted if suspects confessed or if a medical or social service agency determined abuse. 'We found 152 cases of serious or fatal traumatic brain injuries over the two years,' the physician said. ''Out of 230,000 children under age 2 in North Carolina, 80 were injured from shaken baby syndrome.'" Apparently it isn't as widespread a problem as the headlines would have us believe. Thank goodness. posted by Sydney on 8/06/2003 09:03:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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