Endocrine development
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Inflicted non-accidental skeletal injuries form a small but important part of the spectrum of child abuse, with the majority of skeletal injuries occurring in children under 2 years of age. Radiology plays a vital role in the detection and evaluation of these skeletal injuries. A thorough detailed radiological evaluation should be undertaken to investigate a child appropriately for a suspected inflicted non-accidental injury to accurately detect and possibly date any injuries and also to exclude normal variants of growth that may mimic fractures. ⋯ Therefore, it is important that all fractures identified are correlated with any relevant clinical history. Certain injuries, such as rib and metaphyseal fractures, require a more specific method of causation and therefore carry a higher degree of suspicion of being the result of an inflicted injury compared with other fracture types, which are relatively non-specific in their mechanisms of causation, such as skull and clavicular fractures. In all cases, correlation with clinical history is mandatory.