This study describes the effect of mild head injury in preschool children on aspects of their cognitive performance in the year after injury and at the age of 6*5 years, with particular reference to the development of reading skills. Mild head injury was defined by diagnosis at a hospital emergency department of a head injury which was not severe enough to need admission for observation. Seventy eight such children were compared with a group of 86 with a minor injury elsewhere. The groups had similar developmental, family, and socioeconomic status. There were no differences in cognitive tests soon after the injury, but at six months and one year children with mild head injury scored less than controls on one test, solving a visual puzzle (visual closure); they were also more likely to have had another mild head injury. At 6-5 years of age they still scored less than controls, reading ability was related to their visual closure score at one year, and they were more likely to have needed help with reading.Mild head injury seems to be able to produce subtle but significant changes which can affect school performance. (7 Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1995;59:375-380)
This article examines the evidence that the effect
of head injury on young children may differ from that in
adults, in that while in the latter the pattern is of deficits
that recover with time since the accident, this is not
necessarily the case with very young children. In this
group, there may be no evidence of any deficit in the early
days or weeks after injury, but the children may fail to
develop some skills as quickly as children who have not
had a head injury. Results from a series of studies of
MHI in preschool children carried out over a more than
10-year period from Auckland Hospital and recently published
studies of pediatric MHI from other groups are reviewed.
It is concluded from a comparison of these data that there
is a need for long-term prospective studies designed within
a developmental framework to clarify the issue. (JINS,
1997, 3, 592–597.)
Introduction: Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is 100% caused by alcohol. The lifelong disability caused by prenatal alcohol exposure cannot be reversed. Lack of reliable national prevalence estimates of FASD is common internationally and true of Aotearoa, New Zealand. This study modelled the national prevalence of FASD and differences by ethnicity.Methods: FASD prevalence was estimated from self-reported data on any alcohol use during pregnancy for 2012/2013 and 2018/2019, combined with risk estimates for FASD from a meta-analysis of case-ascertainment or clinic-based studies in seven other countries. A sensitivity analysis using four more recent active case ascertainment studies was performed to account for the possibility of underestimation. Results: We estimated FASD prevalence in the general population to be 1.7% (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.0%; 2.7%) in the 2012/2013 year. For M aori, the prevalence was significantly higher than for Pasifika and Asian populations. In the 2018/2019 year, FASD prevalence was 1.3% (95% CI 0.9%; 1.9%). For M aori, the prevalence was significantly higher than for Pasifika and Asian populations. The sensitivity analysis estimated the prevalence of FASD in the 2018/2019 year to range between 1.1% and 3.9% and for M aori, from 1.7% to 6.3%.
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