Book contents
- Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- About This Book
- Abbreviations
- Section 1 Prologue
- Section 2 Medicine
- Section 3 Science
- Chapter 10 The Swedish Systematic Literature Review on Suspected Traumatic Shaking (Shaken Baby Syndrome) and Its Aftermath
- Chapter 11 Interrogation and the Infanticide Suspect
- Chapter 12 Can Confession Substitute for Science in Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma?
- Chapter 13 Cognitive Bias in Medico-legal Judgments
- Chapter 14 Biomechanical Forensic Analysis of Shaking and Short-Fall Head Injury Mechanisms in Infants and Young Children
- Chapter 15 When Lack of Information Leads to Apparent Paradoxes and Wrong Conclusions
- Chapter 16 Epidemiology of Findings Claimed to Be Highly Specific for Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma, a Prerequisite to Improve Diagnosis of Child Abuse
- Chapter 17 Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Section 4 Law
- Section 5 International
- Section 6 Postface
- Appendix: Frequently Repeated Claims concerning Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
Chapter 17 - Shaken Baby Syndrome
Exploring Concerns about the ‘Triad’ Diagnosis and Its Statistical Validation Using a Causal Bayesian Network
from Section 3 - Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 June 2023
Book contents
- Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- About This Book
- Abbreviations
- Section 1 Prologue
- Section 2 Medicine
- Section 3 Science
- Chapter 10 The Swedish Systematic Literature Review on Suspected Traumatic Shaking (Shaken Baby Syndrome) and Its Aftermath
- Chapter 11 Interrogation and the Infanticide Suspect
- Chapter 12 Can Confession Substitute for Science in Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma?
- Chapter 13 Cognitive Bias in Medico-legal Judgments
- Chapter 14 Biomechanical Forensic Analysis of Shaking and Short-Fall Head Injury Mechanisms in Infants and Young Children
- Chapter 15 When Lack of Information Leads to Apparent Paradoxes and Wrong Conclusions
- Chapter 16 Epidemiology of Findings Claimed to Be Highly Specific for Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma, a Prerequisite to Improve Diagnosis of Child Abuse
- Chapter 17 Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Section 4 Law
- Section 5 International
- Section 6 Postface
- Appendix: Frequently Repeated Claims concerning Shaken Baby Syndrome
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
Summary
When very young children are brought to a doctor or hospital with signs and symptoms consistent with head injury, it is important to determine the cause. For almost 50 years, the triad of subdural haematoma (SDH), retinal haemorrhage (RH) and encephalopathy has been regarded as an accurate predictor of deliberate shaking and widely used to diagnose shaken baby syndrome (SBS). Statistical analyses by Cardiff University researchers and others claim to show that certain combinations of findings are highly predictive of abuse and as a result of this conclusion, protocols such as mandatory reporting to police are invoked in the name of protecting the child. However, concerns have been raised about the circularity of approach used in the statistical analyses which requires each case to be classified explicitly as either abuse or non-abuse. By producing a causal model of the problem, we show that these findings are actually a poor predictor of SBS, even where there is some evidence of risk factors indicative of abuse.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shaken Baby SyndromeInvestigating the Abusive Head Trauma Controversy, pp. 259 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
Caffey, J. On the theory and practice of shaking infants: Its potential residual effects of permanent brain damage and mental retardation. American Journal of Diseases of Children. 1972;124(2):161–9.Google Scholar
Caffey, J. The whiplash shaken infant syndrome: Manual shaking by the extremities with whiplash-induced intracranial and intraocular bleedings, linked with residual permanent brain damage and mental retardation. Paediatrics. 1974;54(4):396–403.Google Scholar
Guthkelch, AN. Infantile subdural haematoma and its relationship to whiplash injuries. British Medical Journal. 1971;2(5759):430–1.Google Scholar
Hinds, TS, Giardino, AP. Clinical perspective. In Child physical abuse: Current evidence, clinical practice, and policy directions. Springer Briefs in Public Health. Springer, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61103-7_2.Google Scholar
Uscinski, R. Shaken baby syndrome: An odyssey. Neurologia Medico-chirurgica (Tokyo). 2006;46(2):57–61.Google Scholar
Stewart, M, Hasan, S, Collins, C et al. Can baseline computerised tomography scans be used to identify patients at high risk of vision loss due to Terson syndrome? American Journal of Ophthalmology. 2019;211:217–28.Google Scholar
Ami, O, Maran, J, Gabor, P et al. Three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging of fetal head molding and brain shape changes during the second stage of labor. PLoS One. 2019;14(5):e0215721.Google Scholar
Watts, P, Maguire, S, Kwok, T et al. Newborn retinal hemorrhages: A systematic review. Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. 2013;17(1):70–8.Google Scholar
Hughes, LA, May, K, Talbot, JF, Parsons, MA. Incidence, distribution, and duration of birth-related retinal hemorrhages: A prospective study. Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. 2006;10(2):102–6.Google Scholar
Findley, K, Risinger, M, Barnes, M et al. Feigned consensus: Usurping the law in shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma prosecutions. Wisconsin Law Review. 2019:1211–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dykes, L. The whiplash shaken infant syndrome: What has been learned? Child Abuse and Neglect. 1986;10:211–21.Google Scholar
Duhaime, AC, Gennarelli, T, Thibault, L et al. The shaken baby syndrome: A clinical pathological and biomechanical study. Journal of Neurosurgery. 1987;66(3):409–15.Google Scholar
Purkiss, D. The children of Medea: Euripides, Louise Woodward, and Deborah Eappen. Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature. 1999;11(1):53–64.Google Scholar
Bower, H. Woodward appeal rests on medical evidence. Lancet. 1998;351(9105):812.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thompson, AC, Shapiro, J, Bartlett, S, Lee, C. The child cases: Guilty until proved innocent. 2011. https://text.npr.org/s.php?sid=137454415.Google Scholar
Haberman, C. Shaken baby, syndrome: A diagnosis that divides the medical world. New York Times. 2015. https://nyti.ms/3WCSPPJ.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, W, Plunkett, J. A biomechanical analysis of the causes of traumatic brain injury in infants and children. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. 2004;2(25):89–90.Google Scholar
Wolfson, DR, McNally, DS, Clifford, MJ, Vloeberghs, M. Rigid-body modelling of shaken baby syndrome. Journal of Engineering in Medicine. 2005;219(1):63–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, J, Willey, E, Galaznik, J, Lee, W. Biomechanical evaluation of head kinematics during infant shaking versus paediatric activities of daily living. Journal of Forensic Biomechanics. 2011;2(9):1–9. https://doi.org/10.4303/jfb/F110601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, M, Martin, P, Williams, J, Kemp, A, Theobald, P. Development of a computational biomechanical infant model for the investigation of infant head injury by shaking. Medicine and the Law. 2015;55(4):291–9.Google Scholar
Vester, M, Bilo, R, Loeve, A, Rijn, R, Van Zandwijk, JP. Modelling of inflicted head injury by shaking trauma in children: What can we learn? Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology. 2019;15(3):408–22.Google Scholar
Bonnier, C, Mesples, B, Carpentier, S, Henin, D, Gressens, P. Delayed white matter injury in a murine model of shaken baby syndrome. Brain Pathology. 2022;12(3):320–8.Google Scholar
Gardner, H. A witnessed short fall mimicking presumed shaken baby syndrome (inflicted childhood neurotrauma). Paediatric Neurosurgery. 2007;43(5):433–5.Google Scholar
Lynøe, N, Elinder, G, Hallberg, B et al. Insufficient evidence for ‘shaken baby syndrome’: A systematic review. Acta Paediatrica. 2017;106(7):1021–7.Google Scholar
Cormack, L. Father charged after allegedly shaking baby, causing brain damage. Sydney Morning Herald. 14 November 2018. https://bit.ly/3sZZg1N.Google Scholar
Horan-Block, J, Newman, ET. Accidents happen: Exposing fallacies in child protection abuse cases and reuniting families through aggressive litigation. CUNY Law Review. 2019;22(2):382–425.Google Scholar
Tuerkheimer, D. Flawed convictions: ‘Shaken baby syndrome’ and the inertia of injustice. Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Maguire, S, Kemp, A, Lumb, R, et al. Estimating the probability of abusive head trauma: A pooled analysis. Paediatrics. 2011;128(3):e550–e564.Google Scholar
Cowley, L, Maguire, S, Farewell, D, Kemp, A. Letter to the editor. Law, Probability and Risk. 2018;17(3):275–7.Google Scholar
Papetti, R. The forensic unreliability of the shaken baby syndrome. Academic Forensic Pathology International. 2018.Google Scholar
Cuellar, M. Causal reasoning and data analysis: problems with the abusive head trauma diagnosis. Law, Probability and Risk. 2017;16(4):223–39.Google Scholar
Keenan, HT, Runyan, DK, Marshall, SW, Nocera, MA, Merten, DF. A population-based comparison of clinical and outcome characteristics of young children with serious inflicted and noninflicted traumatic brain injury. Paediatrics. 2004;114(3):633–9.Google Scholar
Lynøe, N, Elinder, G, Hallberg, B et al. Easier to see the speck in your critical peers’ eyes than the log in your own? Response to Debelle et al. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2018;103(7):714.Google Scholar
Pearl, J. Probabilistic reasoning in intelligent systems: Networks of plausible inference. Morgan Kaufmann, 1988.Google Scholar
Trefan, L, Houston, R, Pearson, G et al. Epidemiology of children with head injury: A national overview. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2016;101(6):527–32. https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2015-308424.Google Scholar
Henderson, JG. Subdural haematoma and ‘battered baby’. British Medical Journal. 1968;3(5619):678.Google Scholar
Piatt, JH. A pitfall in the diagnosis of child abuse: External hydrocephalus, subdural hematoma, and retinal haemorrhages. Neurosurgical Focus. 1999;7(4):1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenton, N, Neil, M. Calculating the likelihood ratio for multiple pieces of evidence, 2021. http://arxiv.org/abs/2106.05328.Google Scholar