Incidences of child
abuse have been increasing in the last decades.
Dr. Lynn Sheets and an
associate professor of pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin have been
observing such incidences since a long time.
Dr. Lynn has noted a
strange thing that kids who comes up to him for treatment has been exposed to
minor bruises in their early childhood.
He clarified the
situation by giving the example of a child who came with bruises on his cheeks.
The child's parent attributed it as an accident and the same child was brought
to Dr. Lynn, again beaten up brutally.
A number of similar incidences made Dr. Lynn
to investigate the causes behind such prevalence of child abuse.
The study was
published in the journal Pediatrics
. Lynn's study predicted bruises to be
transformed into severe abuses and this trend was termed as "sentinel"
Sentinel injuries are
regarded as the injuries seen in very young infants who cannot crawl and get
During the research
Dr. Lynn and colleagues analyzed 401 infants under one year of age and
categorized them in three categories.
The first category
included infants who were abused, the second group consisted of children who
were evaluated but not abused and the third category comprised up of children
where the actual situation cannot be predicted.
The outcome of the
study was that around 27.5 percent of the 200 babies, who were abused, had past
history of bruises.
The second group of
children had no sentinel injuries and in the third category about 8 percent of
kids had past history of minor injuries.
The scientists found
it difficult to assess the exact cause of occurrence of such incidences. A very
important thing that was highlighted by the study was the importance of
differentiating when bruises were converted to abuses.
we can call them what they are 'sentinel' injuries, or warning injuries it
helps people think differently about them."
A handsome amount of
money can be saved by preventing child abuses as a single case of abuse costs a
lifetime price tag $210,000. This exorbitant money can be saved if the cases of
child abuses are identified at an early stage.
Crying of a child can
be an important reason for abuse as many people are irritated by the crying of
The government and
NGO's have been promoting various online campaigns to create awareness among
parents and people in general, that crying is a part of child's normal
The experts were of
the opinion that identifying abuse at an initial stage can help families deal
with it in a more proactive way.
Dr. Sheets stressed this point by saying "If we
can identify abuse early, that in and of itself may help families get
additional resources to deal with the stress of a new baby."