Skull radiography involves plain film imaging of skull and nasal bones in pediatric patients. Depending on the patient's age, the difficulty of the examination will vary, often requiring a specialist-trained radiographer familiar with a variety of distraction and immobilization techniques.
On this page:
Indications
trauma with a suspected fracture
detecting foreign bodies
Projections
Gonadal shielding
Gonadal and fetal shielding has been deemed non-beneficial to patients' health in evidence 1-3 and may or may not be useful for pediatric extremity imaging. Placing gonadal shielding can increase the examination time and may cause the child more stress.
Practical points
The major difficulty in pediatric cervical spine radiography relates to:
To overcome this, a variety of techniques can be used 4:
distract the patient with toys, games and/or conversation
using the swaddling technique; wrap the child in a blanket to promote comfort and sleep
Immobilization techniques
Children will find it difficult to keep still, therefore it is helpful to have the parent in the child's direct line of sight to keep the child calm.
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