SIGNIFICANCE OF SKELETAL LESIONS IN INFANTS RESEMBLING THOSE OF TRAUMATIC ORIGIN

Abstract

In every clinic caring for a volume of children there are seen, from time to time, infants with skeletal lesions resembling those due to trauma but unaccompanied by readily volunteered and adequate account of injury. While such cases would appear to be of interest to a variety of disciplines, discussion of them has been chiefly by roentgenologists. Caffey¹first emphasized the frequent association of chronic subdural hematoma and fractures of the long bones in 1946, but, since he was unable to obtain histories of violence in the material he considered, no conclusion as to the nature of this complex was advanced. He was also the first to point out the frequency with which defects in the metaphyses, as contrasted to the shafts of bones, were encountered. Smith,²in Canada, two groups in France,³and Lis and Frauenberger,⁴in this country, noted the same relationship in single