There are studies that show that baby's crying is the most unbearable sound that exists. If so, it is for a very clear reason: Babies have basic needs that they cannot meet, so to claim that we do it, they cry so that there is no possibility that we will not.
The problem is that this crying so intense, and especially when babies cry a lot (sometimes because they have reflux, allergy or so-called baby colic), many fathers lose their patience and end up shaking vigorously at the risk of producing the shaken baby syndrome.
This syndrome causes symptoms so clear that normally, when they are seen, parents are considered guilty and social services enter to assess the case and act quickly to avoid abuse. However, it seems that not everything will be so easy from now on, and that is a controversial study shows that the classic symptoms of 'shaken baby' could happen in the absence of abuse.
What are the symptoms of shaken baby syndrome
It is also known as shaken baby syndrome and currently as brain trauma from abuse, and contemplates all the consequences that a baby can suffer after being shaken by his father or by his mother. They can be from a mild concussion to head and neck injuries that end up causing effects for a lifetime or even death to the baby.
This syndrome is the leading cause of death in cases of traumatic brain injury due to abuse, and it is estimated that 1,200 and 1,400 cases of children with injuries or death for this reason occur in the United States.
When it is more prevalent it is in the first year and the average age is the nine months of life of the baby. While it is shaken, not having enough strength to support its head, the baby's brain moves back and forth inside the skull and can cause eye damage, brain damage, spinal cord damage, developmental delay and a long etcetera derived from all possible lesions in a still immature brain.
In severe cases, when there is brain swelling, hemorrhage on the brain surface Y bleeding behind the retina, the cases go to court that, with the mere presence of these three symptoms, considers the father or the mother (or the accused person) guilty.
That is, until now, this triad of symptoms were considered characteristic of shaken baby syndrome, and as soon as they saw each other, it was considered that this baby had been mistreated.
Some parents convicted of shaken baby syndrome may be innocent
However, a review of studies in this regard is about to reveal something surprising about it and that gives rise to this surprising statement: some parents convicted of mistreating their babies could be innocent.
A team of researchers from Sweden has analyzed 3,700 studies of brain trauma abuse to finally keep about 1,000, which were relevant because babies had the triad of symptoms associated with abuse. Of those they were left with 30 that were well designed and thus they were defrosting the daisy until they stayed with the two studies that contain the evidence on those three symptoms in the absence of other lesions (in other studies there were more associated symptoms and it no longer had to be considered shaken baby syndrome).
What they saw is that those two studies did not provide sufficient scientific evidence that showed that brain inflammation, bleeding and bleeding after the retina happened only after shaking the baby. In this way, the researchers concluded that seeing these symptoms, saying that baby has been mistreated could be a mistake.
And then, what other causes could cause those symptoms?
It is the million dollar question, and yet the researchers did not go in to analyze this. Some studies, as we read in New Scientist, suggest that the triad of symptoms could happen after some fall or even in a small baby after a complex vaginal delivery that will cause brain bleeding.
This, of course, set off the alarms of entities such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Society of Pediatric Radiology in the USA. and the European Society of Pediatric Radiology (ESPR), which requested the SBU, which is the Swedish agency that carried out the study, to show them the analysis of the studies before publishing it. The agency claimed that it had experts who had already done so and that it was not timely to revisit it before publication.
And, just as there could be convicted adults without actually being guilty, from now on the opposite situation could happen: that being unable to prove head trauma due to abuse, many adults are free of charge because there are no witnesses who can testify in favor of the baby.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | When your baby cries so much that you are about to lose your mind, In the shaken baby syndrome the number of guilty women equals that of men, Bibliographic review of the shaken or shaken baby syndrome
