Special considerations in infants and children

Head injury in children is one of the most common causes of death and disability in the US and, increasingly, worldwide. This chapter reviews the causes, patterns, pathophysiology, and treatment of head injury in children across the age spectrum, and compares pediatric head injury to that in adults. Classification of head injury in children can be organized according to severity, pathoanatomic type, or mechanism. Response to injury and repair mechanisms appear to vary at different ages, and these may influence optimal treatment; however, much work is still needed before investigation leads to clearly effective clinical interventions. This is true both for the more severe injuries as well as those at the milder end of the injury spectrum, the latter of which have received increasing attention. In this chapter, neuroassessment tools for each age, newer imaging modalities including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and specific pediatric management issues, including intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring and seizure prophylaxis, are reviewed. Finally, specific head injury patterns and functional outcomes relevant to pediatric patients are discussed. While head injury is common, the number of head-injured children is significantly smaller than the corresponding adult head-injured population. When divided further by specific ages, injury types, and other sources of heterogeneity, properly powered clinical research is likely to require large data sets that will allow for stratification across variables, including age. While much has been learned in the past several decades, further study will be required to determine the best management practices for optimizing recovery in individual pediatric patients. This approach is likely to depend on collaborative international head injury databases that will allow researchers to better understand the nuanced evolution of different types of head injury in patients at each age, and the pathophysiologic, treatment-related, and genetic factors that influence recovery.