Children and Electrical Injuries: Unexpected Consequences to Watch for After a Child Sustains and Electrical Injury
This article is not designed to warn parents of the dangers of children and electricity. That subject has been fairly well covered in websites and parenting books the world over, and the natural fear parents have for the safety of their little ones is the greatest defense against foreseeable accidents. Most homes with small children are fairly well childproofed, but any parent will tell you that it is impossible to keep kids completely free accidents.
This article is for “after the fact.” There is a great lack of information available about the fallout of childhood electrical injuries, and the resulting syndrome is incredibly confusing and ambiguous. At the present time, very few doctors are able to identify the after effects of electrical injuries beyond the injuries that present at the time of the accident.
Why are the consequences of electrical injuries so confusing? Well, there are several answers to that question. First of all, the pathways that electrical currents can follow as they travel through the body are almost unlimited in their combinations of location and damage potential. Depending on the point of entry of the current, the type of current introduced to the body (throw, pull, arc), and subtle conditions of the body such as size, degrees of hydration, and muscle, bone, and fat ratios, the path a current may travel through the body is nearly impossible to gauge, or even to detect after the injury. Subsequent problems may affect virtually any part of the body. Ramifications may be cardiac, neurological, cognitive, or any combination of the potential
Another reason for the difficulty victims, families, and their health care providers have in determining the effects of electrical injuries is that there is a lack of understanding about the morbidity of these occurrences. There is a lack of correlation between the severity of the initial injury and the later consequences of EI. A child who receives a significant electrical shock, but appears to walk away from the incident uninjured, will generally be seen by his or her family and medical team as “very lucky,” and given a clean bill of health.
However, late onset and progressive problems are common in survivors of electrical injuries, and generally will not be traced back to the initial accident. Many patients wind up confused and frustrated by frequent missed and wrong diagnoses throughout their lifetimes. The bodies of children are still forming, and the way an electrical injury affects their systems is not clear. Many of the problems caused by EI do not present themselves until it is too late for most doctors to connect the current condition of the patient with the initial injury.
So, what should parents look for after their child has been treated by his or her pediatrician and pronounced sound? An exact list of potential symptoms is hard to compile, but there is a general trend that the health of many patients with a history of electrical injury tend to follow. Some of the most common problems seen in survivors of EI include frequent, sometimes chronic headaches, neurological deficits, particularly peripheral neuropathies (numbness, tingling, and lack of sensitivity of the hands, feet, arms, and legs), dizziness, cardiac problems, problems with memory and processing, emotional changes, and generalized, undiagnosed pain conditions. However this frustrating syndrome can manifest itself with such varying, seemingly unconnected combinations of physical, cognitive, and neurological problems, that I strongly urge parents of children who have experienced an electrical injury to insist on a specific combination of tests, which I will list at the end of this article.
What prompted me to become so knowledgeable about the fallout of childhood electrical injuries? Most of the information contained in this article is the result of long and painstaking investigation into this underreported, understudied condition. My motivation was very, very strong.
When I was six years old, I determined that I was old enough to toast my own English muffin in the absence of my mother’s presence in the kitchen. Naturally, those nooks and crannies did what nooks and crannies do, and the muffin got caught in the toaster. As highly developed a problem solver as most curious and energetic six year old children typically are, I grabbed a stainless steel knife from the utensil drawer and went to work freeing my muffin.
The next thing I knew I was crumpled in a ball on the floor at the base of the wall on the other side of the kitchen. Whether alerted by some sort of noise caused by the incident or by some sort of mother’s intuition, my mother came running into the kitchen, and grabbed me from the floor.
After careful examination, it was determined that I was uninjured, but that I probably wasn’t ready to be experimenting with the kitchen appliances. Nothing more was thought about the incident beyond its place in family lore.
As I aged, I was considered to be many things: clumsy, distracted, scholastically lazy, dramatic, and overly sensitive. I suffered from severe migraines, dizziness, short-term memory and processing problems, numbness and decreased sensitivity of the arms, legs, hands and feet, and varying other ambiguous medical problems.
Over the years I have been misdiagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, Labrynthitis, and converted migraines. Multiple Sclerosis has been investigated during three separate phases of my condition’s advancement, and I have had more medical tests and procedures than I care to recount.
As it turns out, the dizziness is caused by a problem with the electrical conduction problem of my heart, which causes me to experience arrhythmias (short PR syndrome), and the memory and processing problems are caused by damage to the electrical conduction system to the brain (the white matter tracts). The numbness and deadness of feeling in my limbs, hands and feet are the result of a combination of peripheral neuropathy and “spontaneous” Carpal Tunnel (common in victims of hand held electrical injuries).
So, what should you do if your child is post electrical injury and is exhibiting unexplained problems medical, cognitive, or behavioral problems? Well, speaking to your child’s pediatrician about ordering an MRI should always be your first stop if your child is experiencing cognitive, neurological, or behavioral changes. Although an MRI may not be helpful in determining if there is any fallout from an electrical injury, it is important to ensure that there are no changes or irregularities in the brain or spinal cord that might otherwise explain the changes your child is experiencing. A full blood panel should also be performed to look for simple explanations for the alterations in your child.
Having covered these basics, and finding no determination, there are a few tests I strongly urge you to insist upon being performed on your child to discover if there is any lasting or developing damage from the electrical injury he or she has experienced.
1. An EKG. Cardiac problems are a common result of electrical injury and a simple EKG performed by a competent professional should indicate whether further cardiac investigation is warranted.
2. An EMG and Nerve Conduction study. While not a terribly comfortable test, the EMG and the Nerve Conduction study can determine whether there is any nerve or muscle damage to the arms, legs, hands, or feet.
3. A Neuropsychological Evaluation. The tests performed in neuropsychological assessments can really shed a lot of light on just what kind (if any) of impairment the brain is operating with, and in what part of the brain the impairment is located. This information is invaluable to the patient, family, and medical team, both in understanding what the problems the child is experiencing, and also in learning how to rehab the brain and to train it to utilize other areas to take over for the damaged areas.
People who have experienced electrical injuries exhibit the fallout of those incidents in such wildly varying ways, due to the nature of electricity itself, and its method of traveling through the body. It is important for families to not feel guilty if they find their child to be uninjured at the time of the accident, only to determine problems later in their development. There is no rhyme or reason to the syndrome, and no predictable patterns. Better research and education is desperately needed into the effects, including late onset ramifications, of electrical injuries, and the current available information is extremely limited. It may take a lot of independent research and some strong advocacy on the part of the families of children who have experienced electrical injuries, but the hard work is well paid off. It took thirty years and an enormous number of specialists to finally determine the cause of my problems. Be vocal. Make sure your child’s health care providers know this incident is in his or her past and don’t be afraid to insist on tests that are not being initiated by his or her doctor. Believe me, it’s worth it.
