Jim Misko lectures frequently across the country on traumatic brain injuries, some of which are the result of violently shaking a baby. Shaken baby syndrome is a key part of Misko's presentations, during which he does a three- to five-second demonstration of what severely shaking a baby really looks like. "I always start crying," says Misko, a clinical neuropsychologist and clinical director of Brown-Karhan Healthcare, a rehabilitation facility for people with a traumatic brain injury in Dripping Springs, Texas, and father of two.

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a lay term used to define medical problems resulting from violently shaking back and forth a very young child, usually age 1 and under. "The results [of SBS] are dramatic and often irreversible," including death, Misko says.

The phrase "shaken baby syndrome" only has been used for about 35 years, and this form of abuse didn't start receiving much attention until the early 1990s. One reason for the delay is it can be difficult in a court of law to place blame on a perpetrator solely for shaking a baby, according to Marcus DeGraw, a pediatrician and medical director of the Child Protection Team at St. John's Hospital in Detroit. Another is the fact that many of the studies on SBS are based on mechanical models, not real babies, DeGraw points out.

Experts like DeGraw and Misko agree that terms like "abusive head trauma" or "abusive head injury" better convey both the horror of the baby's extreme maltreatment and the likely fact that violent shaking was part of the abuse. Furthermore, the more commonly named shaken baby syndrome is considered grossly underreported. Some child-abuse resources report 1,000 new cases a year in the United States; others report up to 50,000 new cases of SBS, according to Misko.

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