Functional recovery following head injury among children

✍ Scribed by Arlene I. Greenspan

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 851 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1538-5442
• DOI: 10.1016/s0045-9380(96)80004-1

✦ Synopsis

Head injury is a primary cause of death and disability among children and adolescents. In 1985 approximately 78,000 children under the age of 15 were hospitalized for treatment of head injury. 1 On the basis of pilot data from statewide surveillance systems in Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates the incidence of traumatic head injury at 93 per 100,000 for children under 5 years of age and 70 per 100,000 for children aged 5 to 14 years. 2

Improvements in acute management of head injury has resulted in greater survivorship among children who sustain severe head injury; however, many of these children will be left with lifelong disabilities. In addition, changes in health care policy have resulted in shorter lengths of stay, fewer hospitalizations, and a greater involvement of the primary-care physician as a gatekeeper. As a result, pediatricians and other primary care physicians may be increasingly involved in the management of children who have sustained head injuries.

* Researchers are increasingly using the term traumatic brain injury instead of head injury to describe cranio-cerebral trauma. For this article, however, the term head injury is used throughout the text. While head injury and traumatic brain injury often are used interchangeably, head injury is a more inclusive term that includes brain and other intracranial injuries as well as skull fractures. Since several of the articles reviewed for this paper used the term head injury instead of traumatic brain injury, the more general term was chosen for both consistency and accuracy.