Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

“As the mother of a grown son with a traumatic brain injury, I couldn't be more excited about the prospect of finding out how to repair even a small part of the damage that changed his life.” Judy Woodruff, author.

This special issue of the Journal of Pediatric Neuroradiology is intended to provide the reader with different perspectives regarding the imaging care for children with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The editors and authors have developed this content so that radiologists and those involved in the care of pediatric patients with TBI and TBI research find it useful because of the following topics:

• Overview of the role of neuroimaging in pediatric TBI: It highlights the evolving goals for acute and serial imaging in TBI and its role in the multidimensional management of TBI.

• Pictorial review of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in pediatric TBI: It illustrates the most common CT and MRI findings in pediatric TBI.

• Indications for pediatric CT imaging and scoring of CT findings: It provides a summary of latest clinical decision rules guiding use of imaging in children with TBI and discusses use of scoring systems for findings on noncontrast head CT.

• Updates on MRI research applications in pediatric TBI: It summarizes the evolving role of using MRI in acute TBI and discusses opportunities for research using common advanced MRI techniques.

• Perspective on quality of life in pediatric TBI: It reviews pathology and clinical outcomes in pediatric TBI, including a detailed case vignette.

• Overview of research MRI protocols and common data elements (CDE) in pediatric TBI: It informs about MRI research protocols that are being promoted at the national level, along with CDE to facilitate translation of research efforts from different investigator sites.

• Abusive head trauma and the role of neuroimaging: It summarizes principles in the workup of abusive head trauma and the role of neuroimaging and various findings on neuroimaging exams.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this special issue. We thank all the authors for their contributions. We also thank the Journal of Pediatric Neuroradiology for this opportunity to increase the awareness about the role of neuroimaging in children with TBI.