Almost half of the infants showed signs of flat spots on their heads in one research. This number is higher than previous studies.
Aliyah Mawji, lead author of the study from the Mount Royal University, and her colleagues examined about 440 infants between 7 and 12 weeks old in four different clinics in Alberta, Canada. 204 of them were diagnosed to have signs of positional plagiocephaly.
Plagioceophaly, also known as flat head syndrome, is a condition wherein there is flattening on one side of the skull which results to a flat spot on the back or side of the head. This usually happens when a baby stays on a supine position for a long time.
There were previous studies which showed a varying rate from 3.1 percent to 16 percent. There was also another one which showed 61 percent. The huge variance made them facilitate another research using an improved methodology though the use of community-based data collection sites. Previous studies focused only on a single hospital and examined only infants that are seven weeks old and below.
The researchers wanted to alert health authorities that parents need more education for them to learn how to prevent the flat head syndrome. It may cause facial deformity on the infants which may call for difficult psychosocial implications when they start going to school.
Infants involved in the research were assessed between July and Sept. 2010 using a new tool developed Louis Argenta, a plastic surgeon from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. They examined the skull of the babies in various angles looking for deformities.
The analysis revealed that 78.3 percent of the infants had mild signs of flat spots on their head with 63.2 percent located on the right side.
The study was published on the online journal Pediatrics.
