Skull Fractures

Head injury, common in children, is the most frequent cause of death among abused children under 2 years of age [1–5]. Skull fractures reportedly are present in between 2 and 20% of children who present to U.S. hospitals for outpatient evaluation of head injuries [6]. Although head injury and skull fracture statistics generally are not separated from each other in the clinical literature, the leading causes of head injury in children, in decreasing order of frequency, are falls, motor vehicle crashes, pedestrian and bicycle injuries, sports-related trauma, and child abuse [7, 8]. Skull fractures are described in the following bones in order of decreasing frequency: parietal, occipital, frontal, and temporal bones [9–12]. Linear fractures are most common in children, followed by depressed fractures and fractures of the basilar skull [9]. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.