BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Although children with isolated skull fractures rarely require acute interventions, most are hospitalized. Our aim was to safely decrease the hospitalization rate for children with isolated skull fractures. METHODS We designed and executed this multifaceted quality improvement (QI) initiative between January 2008 and July 2015 to reduce hospitalization rates for child...

Radiographic characteristics of skull fractures in 39 cases of documented child abuse were compared with skull fractures in 95 cases of accidental injury to determine if differential features could be identified. All children were less than 2 years old. Emergency room and hospital records for these patients were also reviewed. The results of this study show that clinical features did not provid...

Between 1935 and 1974, 3598 episodes of head trauma among Olmsted County, Minnesota, residents resulted in 1097 skull fractures. Of these, 53% were simple, 16% were depressed, 12% were compound, and 19% were basilar. The age-and sex-adjusted incidence of skull fractures was 44.3 per 100,000 person-years overall, was somewhat greater in the urban than in the rural areas of Olmsted County, and wa...

Animal bites are extremely common in the United States and their incidence is increasing [1-5]. Dog bites are most common, usually producing variable flesh wounds without bony injury. Reports of fractures from bites are difficult to find. However, canine bites present a special hazard to the infant skull which is relatively thin and incompletely mineral ized . One compound depressed skull fract...

The efficacy of the posteroanterior and lateral ScoutView images with an abbreviated (every other cut) computed tomographic (CT) examination for skull fractures and associated intracranial trauma was analyzed. The every-other-slice CT study found all the brain injuries detected by the complete CT study. In addition, 20 of 21 skull fractures were identified on the posteroanterior and lateral Sco...

Seven patients with growing skull fractures treated between 1983 and 1993 are described. These growing fractures constituted 1.6% of all the cases of skull fractures seen during the period (a total of 449 cases). Based on aetiopathogenesis, computed tomography (CT) appearances, operative findings and management strategies required, three main types of growing skull fractures were recognized. In...

During two 12-month periods, 12,395 accident and emergency department attenders with head injury were collected. Those characteristics which were significantly more common in head-injured patients who had skull fractures on X-ray were identified. These characteristics were: recent alcohol consumption in adults, initial unconsciousness, amnesia of any duration, vomiting, neurological signs, inju...