Long-term outcomes of the shaken baby syndrome prevention program: Turkey's experience.

AIM: Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a condition which may cause to serious health problems in the baby. SBS may be prevented by increasing awareness with giving education to parents especially in the early postnatal period. In shaken baby prevention programs, education is recommended to be given before the 2-4(th) month during which the frequency of crying is increased. It is important that education given in the early period is permanent until the period during which the frequency of crying is increased. The aim of this study was to evaluate the persistency of the benefit of the SBS prevention program until the 2-4(th) month during which crying is intensified.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study is an interventional study. When the babies became 2-4 months old, a questionnaire which questioned the usefulness of education and the experiences with babies was applied to a group selected randomly among the mothers who received SBS prevention education during pregnancy or in the first 7 postnatal days (group A). The same questionnaire was applied to 143 mothers whose babies completed their first 2 months, who presented to the hospital for vaccination and who did not receive education about SBS as the control group (group B). The data were evaluated using the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS) 15.0 statistical analysis package program. Ethical approval was obtained from the local ethics committee (30.12.2009, 2785).

RESULTS: The rate of the mothers who stated "yes" to the sentence "babies occasionally cry" which was one of the main messages of the education was statistically significantly higher in group A compared to group B (p=0.001). The rate of the mothers who stated "I agree" to the sentence "battering is harmful for babies" was statistically significantly higher in group A compared to group B (p=0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: Conclusively, it was found that SBS prevention program education was permanent until the 2-4(th) month.