Child Had Head Injury, Neck Pain. Worried.

Posted on Tue, 24 Jan 2012

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 Answered on

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 Last reviewed on

Question : Hello, we are away in a third world country vacationing, my two year old fell and hit her head off the floor really har, her hand did not come down to stop her fall, she has a bruise on the front of her head where she landed the brunt of the fall.
She is complaining about neck pain, we have her sitting with an ice pack watching XXXXXXX and when she moves around she complains and cry's.
Otherwise she is content to watch XXXXXXX I can not see anything abnormal on her neck no marking of any kind and her eyes look normal, her behavior and awareness are completely normal. She is able to move into slightly different positions without complaining but major movements are seemingly painful for her.

I am very concerned! it has been four hours since fall and I am not sure weather we should catch a plane home because she is still complaining of neck pain when she moves
Please help !

Answered by Dr. Dr.Raju.A.T (1 hour later)

Hi,

Thanks for your query.

Specially in children there sometimes might be an intra-cranial bleed without many overt external signs like pupillary constriction, vomiting or altered sensorium.Neck pain can be one amongst the external signs.

There will be high risk of delayed bleeding which may happen due to dislodgement of the primary clot holding the bleeding spot and that could happen any time within 24 hours after the fall.

I suggest you not to take chance and take your child to the ER, get examined also with a CT scan of the Brain as early as possible.

Wish her good health,

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar