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
| Did you know? |
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| Brain injury is the leading sports-related cause of death in children. |


