Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a triad of medical symptoms: subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhage, and cerebral oedema from which doctors, consistent with current medical understanding, infer child abuse caused by intentional shaking. In a majority of cases there is no visible sign of external trauma.
SBS is often fatal and can cause severe brain damage, resulting in lifelong disability. Estimated death rates (mortality) among infants with SBS range from 15% to 38%; the median is 20%–25%. Up to half of deaths related to child abuse are reportedly due to shaken baby syndrome. Nonfatal consequences of SBS include varying degrees of visual impairment (including blindness), motor impairment (e.g. cerebral palsy) and cognitive impairments.
Read more about Shaken Baby Syndrome: Signs and Symptoms, Mechanism, Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, Prognosis, Epidemiology, Risk Factors, History, Legal Issues
Famous quotes containing the words shaken, baby and/or syndrome:
“Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“Your old skin puckering, your lungs’ breath
Grown baby short as you looked up last
At my face swinging over the human bed,
And somewhere you cried, let me go let me go.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech’s daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)