# brain injury: leading cause of death in kids? Really? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 26, 2017, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-injury-leading-cause-of-death-in-kids-really/778221 "2017-01-26T14:15:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-injury-leading-cause-of-death-in-kids-really/778221/1 "2017-01-26T14:15:33Z")
I went to this website and they make this claim: [http://www.biausa.org/brain-injury-children.htm](http://www.biausa.org/brain-injury-children.htm) > [@](#): > > Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of disability and death in children and adolescents in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the two age groups at greatest risk for TBI are age 0-4 and 15-19. I’m not convinced, so I went to the CDC website and poked around a bit, but didn’t find anything satisfying that explicitly says TBI is THE leading cause of disability and death in these age groups. Can someone help me validate this statement? maybe find what I’m missing on the CDC website. Or maybe corroborate this statement with a reasonable outside source? ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-injury-leading-cause-of-death-in-kids-really/778221/2 "2017-01-26T14:26:06Z")
In the US the [CDC says “unintentional injuries.”](https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10lcid_all_deaths_by_age_group_2010-a.pdf) [Not worldwide though.](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs178/en/) ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-injury-leading-cause-of-death-in-kids-really/778221/3 "2017-01-26T22:42:41Z")
Could it be that death and disability are being combined to come up with the “leading cause” number? If you take the cite about “unintentional injuries” and the TBI causes of falls, unintentional blunt trauma, and motor vehicle accidents [Get the Facts About TBI | Concussion | Traumatic Brain Injury | CDC Injury Center](https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/get_the_facts.html) , combined death and disability by TBI could be the leader. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-injury-leading-cause-of-death-in-kids-really/778221/4 "2017-01-26T23:06:01Z")
“Leading cause” is an imprecise term that may be manipulated to make something seem more or less important. It depends how you group of multiple deaths into what is deemed a single cause. For example, in the case of the CDC data that **Gedd** posted, “suicide” seems like a reasonable single category, but it seems more arbitrary to lump all kinds of “unintentional injury” into a comparable single category. It’s difficult to see just what’s going on with the brain injury claim, but if you deem “brain injury” to be a single category, and subdivide everything else into different categories with sufficient granularity, eventually you can claim that brain injury is the leading cause. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-injury-leading-cause-of-death-in-kids-really/778221/5 "2017-01-27T12:43:37Z")
ED doc here… Kids don’t die, at least not very commonly. So even the term “leading cause of death” should not be confused with “commonly die from.” (Not that you are doing that.) First few hours, kids die from various issues relating to the birth process. First year or two, kids die from bad genes and infections. SIDS. Once they get past that period,your regular kid dies from injuries, toxins, cancers and–very occasionally–infectious diseases. Of these, injuries are the most common. Throw in “disability” and I think it’s reasonable to say TBI tops the list. A typical injury is blunt trauma from falls and car accidents, etc. And within that broad group, head injuries are the thing that kills them or leaves them disabled. Sure; ruptured spleens and whatnot, but I’d say TBI tops the list, especially when you throw in “disabled” because the other blunt injuries are largely resolved in a non-disabling way–perhaps with the exception of spinal injuries. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-injury-leading-cause-of-death-in-kids-really/778221/6 "2017-01-28T01:32:19Z")
Presumably in whole bunch of cases, which you’d normally consider a “cause of death”, the actual literal thing that caused the death would be often be brain injury. e.g.: Car accident, being struck by a car, physical violence, bike accident, a fall, etc. And in the current age, where young death by illness are pretty rare those cause probably make up a majority of child death.