Half of children who experience a severe abusive head trauma before the age of 5 will die before they turn 21, according to a new study.
In addition, among those who survive severe injuries, quality of life will be cut in half, the study found.
Abusive head trauma includes shaken baby syndrome, in which an infant or toddler is shaken and suffers head injuries, according to background information in the study.
In the United States, "at least 4,500 children a year suffer preventable abusive head trauma," said lead researcher Ted Miller, of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, in Calverton, Md.
Among children with any abusive head trauma, including minor cases, one in three "will not survive to adulthood, and even the survivors will lose significant quality of life," Miller said.
The findings were published online Nov. 17 in the journal Pediatrics.
Miller and his colleagues noted that more than 300 U.S. children died within 30 days of an abusive head trauma in 2009. These numbers came from vital statistics data from a national inpatient database, according to the study.
[For more of this story, written by Tara Haelle, go to http://consumer.healthday.com/...mer.healthday.com%2F]
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