Child Health News Wednesday, May 16, 2007 -- Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of abusive death in children and is especially common in abused children under the age of 4. Fifteen hundred children a year in U.S. are killed because of traumatic brain injury and those who survive are often devastated.

It is impossible to do randomized controlled studies of abusive head trauma but researchers need to develop improved tools to correctly identify and ultimately prevent this abuse according to Dr. Laskey.

"We have to understand abusive head trauma. Research in the field is in its infancy compared to what we know about other pediatric conditions. We need to increase both the volume and the quality of what we know. We need to know more and we can't until we have pediatricians and pathologists, the doctors who see these children, speaking the same language," said Dr. Laskey.

Here's the complete article.

Labels: child abuse, TBI, traumatic brain injury