These are worrying numbers. The number of shaken baby syndromes (SBS) doubled during Covid-19 in the Paris region and mortality increased ninefold. Statistics advanced by a Necker hospital study and revealed this Wednesday by the parisian.
According to the study carried out by the Parisian hospital, this phenomenon of violence, where the baby is shaken from side to side with the risk of creating bruises in his brain, is becoming more frequent. Of 50 cases identified in Île-de-France between 2017 and 2019, there were 17 in 2020, then 32 in 2021 alone.
Sequelae for 75% of survivors
in the columns of ParisianGilles Orliaguet, head of Necker’s anesthesia-resuscitation department and co-author of the study, says “there were not only more cases, but they were more severe” last year. Because according to general statistics on SBS, 10% of babies die from shaking, and the consequences are very serious in the vast majority of cases.
“75% of survivors have sequelae for life,” warns the newspaper Anne Laurent-Vanier, a specialist on the subject. “These are paralysis, blindness, language disorders, wandering, epilepsy.”
In question: adults exhausted by crying, who end up shaking the child. Most of the time, small babies only a few months old, whose brain damage will show up very quickly after it hits the back of their skull.
During the pandemic, conditions conducive to violence
According to the associations, it is rather the parents and the nurses who are the authors of these shocks. And during the pandemic, unfortunately the conditions were met for an increase in the phenomenon according to Professor Orliaguet. Isolation, “family promiscuity”, added to a drop in prevention regarding the subject.
The doctor insists on the need to relaunch awareness campaigns about SBS as soon as possible, and states that unfortunately “a few shocks” can be enough to cause irreparable damage to children.
Source: BFM TV
