Subcortical Lacerations, a Significant Sign of Shaken Baby Syndrome - Diagnosis with High-Resolution Duplex Sonography.

Abstract

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is the most common cause of death and long-term disability in infants and young children. Victims are usually boys under 2 years of age. Inconsolable crying is an important risk factor. There is often no obvious external evidence of injury or physical sign of violence, resulting in underdiagnosis of SBS. Symptoms are often nonspecific, caused by generalized brain swelling. The various symptoms that are suspicious for SBS are listed in ▶ Table 1. In every suspicious case, imaging of the brain should be performed. Although cerebral sonography is the imaging method of choice in patients under one year of age, there are only a few reports on the use of ultrasound to diagnose the syndrome. The current literature focuses on CT and MRI. The present paper focuses on the visualization of subcortical lacerations with high-resolution sonography (HRS).