According to researchers, the incidence of abusive head trauma in infants in the Paris metropolitan area increased sharply during the first 2 years of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2021).
- According to the “Stop Shaken Baby” association, this abuse concerns an average of 200 babies per year in France.
- Massive increase in shaken baby cases in second year of pandemic may be explained by accumulation of psychosocial distress, scientists say
A study confirms what the associations feared: confinements, which would cloister families together at home, have exposed children to an increase in abuse.
Nine-fold increase in mortality
Researchers from the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital of the AP-HP and Paris Cité University, associated with a team from Inserm reveal in a study published in the JAMA Network Open review that the incidence of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) has doubled and its mortality has increased ninefold in the Paris region during the Covid-19 pandemic.
99 infants with SBS showing different but very frequent signs of violence were studied by the researchers: 87% of them had ruptured bridging veins (which connect the brain to the inner wall of the skull), 75% of retinal hemorrhages, 32% fractures, 26% status epilepticus, and 13% died.
These figures deserve to be fleshed out at the national level, to see if “the increase was heterogeneous geographically“, according to the Jama study.
violently shaken
Also called “non-accidental head injury” (NAIT), shaken baby syndrome results when a baby or young child is violently shaken by an adult. “These tremors, always extremely violent, are most often produced when seizing the baby under the armpits or by the thorax” describe the Ministry of Health and Prevention.
The SBS is the most common cause of traumatic death among infants in high-income countries.
A shaken baby, if he survives, will have serious sequelae and may develop neurodevelopmental disorders such as epilepsy, motor and visual impairments, language disorders, intellectual disabilities and behavioral abnormalities.
