Conditions & Treatments
- A to Z Guide

Head/brain injury

Disease Information

Tests

How is a head injury/brain injury diagnosed?

In many cases, the full extent of a child’s head injury isn’t obvious right away. That’s why it’s key that you obtain a diagnosis from a qualified medical professional as soon as possible.

Here at Children’s, our trauma specialists will perform a comprehensive physical exam on your child and ask for a full medical history, as well as a detailed account of how and where the injury occurred.

Next, doctors may also order any or all of the following:

blood tests
X-rays, which use small doses of radiation to take pictures of a part of the body
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a combination of electromagnets, radio frequency waves and computers that takes two-dimensional and three-dimensional images of the brain and other body structures
computed tomography (CT) scans, a non-invasive procedure that uses x-ray equipment and powerful computers to create detailed images of the head, brain and other body parts
electroencephalogram (EEG), a procedure that records the brain's continuous electrical activity through electrodes attached to the scalp