Talk:Retinal haemorrhage

What
What can cause Retinal haemorrhages in infants besides being shaken?

There are several causes of retinal hemorrhages in infants, including leukemia, blunt trauma, birth-related hemorrhages (very commonly seen in the first 2 weeks of life), and a bunch of other conditions that cause generalized bleeding problems. Most of these causes are easily distinguished from shaken baby syndrome (SBS). There may be a history, for example, of easy bruising. There may be some non-child abuse shaking forms of trauma which can produce hemorrhages similar to those seen in SBS; for example, I had a patient whose head was shaken when not being appropriately restrained in a car seat during a motor vehicle accident. She had hemorrhages identical to those seen in classic SBS. Of course, she also had a plausible history which included a shaking mechanism appropriate to cause those hemorrhages. Many causes of retinal hemorrhages (for example, diabetes and hypertension) either don't happen in very young children, or have hemorrhages that don't look like the kind found in SBS.

There are some very rare (liver and other) diseases that can predispose to generalized and retinal hemorrhages while being a little more challenging to diagnose. But these diseases are much rarer, unfortunately, than shaken baby syndrome.