Traumatic Brain Injury: Pediatricians and Pathologists Have TBI Differently

Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine have found that when pediatricians and pathologists were given the same hypothetical situations, they came to different conclusions over half the time about whether the death should be investigated as a child abuse case. The study shows that more uniform standards must be established to help prevent abuse.

Pediatricians and Pathologists See Traumatic Brain Injury Differently

Traumatic brain injury is the main cause of death in abused children. It is most common in children under the age of four. About fifteen hundred children a year in the United States are killed because of traumatic brain injury and those who do not die of their injuries often suffer permanent effects. Antoinette Laskey, M.D., M.P.H., a researcher involved in the study, said of the research: "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."