Washington, Sept 18: A new research has revealed that violently shaking a baby can result the brain damage.

Brain damage due to this is one of the serious consequences extracted from the bibliographic review carried out by a group of interns at the Teaching Maternity Unit of the University College of Health Care of the University of Granada (UGR).

Crying is one way in which an infant expresses its feelings and needs, but the researchers noted that if parents cannot discern what their baby needs, they react sharply by shaking the baby.

The violent shake of the infant's head causes brain damage and, as a result, the infant stops crying. For this reason, this behaviour may be repeated in similar situations.

According to Concepción Ruiz Rodríguez, lecturer of the Department of Nursing of the UGR and head of the research group, the “shaken baby syndrome” is not well-known and may cause several injuries which, in most cases, have no outward physical signs.

The seriousness of the brain damage depends on the frequency, intensity and duration of the shake, there are other minor injuries observed due to this syndrome, such as irritability, lethargy, convulsions, vomiting or lack of appetite, and others that are more serious such as eye injury and broken bones.

Victims are mostly below two years of age, and the most vulnerable victims include premature babies, low-weight babies, babies with excessive colic, disabled babies, twins and stepchildren.

A study, which was conducted to analyse the section that handles the baby most aggressively, suggested that aggressors are mostly men, frequently the father (44 percent) followed by the mother's boyfriend living in the family home (20 percent). The most frequent aggressors among women are the babysitters (18 percent) and the mothers (7 percent).

Many of the diagnosed cases that produced internal damage to the infant have been caused by mistreatment or abuse, according to the information collected from the scientific articles published over the last five years.

For this reason, early detection and especially appropriate prevention by health professionals is essential, because this syndrome may cause serious long-term effects on the infant. In fact, a poor assessment could lead to serious consequences or even the death of the victim. 20 percent of victims die during the days following the aggression, and of those who survive, 50 percent suffer from a wide variety of disabilities and only 30 percent recover fully.

The study is published by the Nursing Journal Rol. (With Inputs from ANI)