SBS under the microscope - again!
Shaken baby syndrome itself is put on trial in Fairfax court
|
ยป adsonar_placementId=1483491;adsonar_pid=1900767;adsonar_ps=-1;adsonar_zw=228;adsonar_zh=215;adsonar_jv=”ads.adsonar.com”; |
Uscinski said he had testified more than 100 times in shaken baby cases, always for the defense. “I’ve never been contacted by the prosecution,” he said. Last year, he estimated he made about $200,000 in testifying and consulting fees.
He said there were numerous explanations for bleeding in an infant’s brain that were unrelated to shaking, especially with no marks or trauma on a child’s neck, arms or body.
Both Uscinski and Colorado ophthalmologist Horace Gardner said the trauma of birth often causes blood vessels in an infant’s brain to tear away and break. “About half of children at birth have blood in the head,” Gardner said. “Most of them go away, or we’d all be dead.”
But a small percentage of babies continues to bleed, Gardner said, which results in hematomas and increased pressure in the head and on the eyes. That pressure can lead to retinal hemorrhages, Gardner said. “There’s never been a retinal hemorrhage produced by shaking an eye,” Gardner said.
Uscinski said the extra space between Noah’s skull and brain indicated he had extra fluid in his head caused by a chronic hematoma, a blood clot on the surface of the brain that gradually dissolves but then re-forms, undetected, as new bleeding occurs.
The blood in Noah’s brain scans, both CT and MRI images, was in locations characteristic of a “rebleed,” Uscinski said, and that “there’s no real bleeding inside the brain itself.” He said the scans showed evidence of oxygen deprivation, and that records showed Noah went for 51 minutes before he was fully intubated at the hospital.
Gardner noted that Noah was a small child at birth, with a head size in the 10th percentile. But at his four-month checkup, his head size was in the 30th percentile, an abnormal growth rate and indicator of problems inside his skull that Noah’s pediatricians should have noted, Gardner said.