Is A Childs Head And Brain Different Than An Adults?
In evaluating the head injuries of young children, it is important to appreciate that the trauma affects a brain and skull that are in the process of maturing and developing so that head injuries in young children differ in certain respects from head injuries seen later in life. The skull of a young child is thin and pliable because the bone is not yet ossified, the sutures are not yet fused, and the fontanelles are open. The head of a young child is proportionately much larger and heavier than later in life because the brain grows very rapidly and attains 75% of its full weight by age two years although it is far from mature in development. The newborn child’s head is about 10 to 15% of its body weight compared to 2 to 3% for the adult head. Within the skull, the dura is a thick membrane covering the surface of the brain and attached to the inner surface of the skull. Beneath the dura are the leptomeninges consisting of the two thin layers of the arachnoid and the pia separated by the
