The Reality of Child Abuse in Korea

A trauma surgeon is always concerned about child abuse when he or she meets injured children. Abused children will be neglected if trauma surgeons only concentrate on the injured site or physical dynamics. Lately, violence on children has increased in Korea. Therefore, in this study, we considered child abuse through a review of the literatures. An eleven-year-old boy visited the emergency room vomiting with abdominal distension. He had been kicked in the abdomen by his step-mother 10 days earlier. The computed tomography revealed a transected pancreas tail and neck with a large pesudocyst (Fig. 1) and laboratory findings showed an elevated amylase level of more than 6,500 IU/L. Because he complained of severe pain with rebound tenderness on the whole abdomen, he underwent an emergent laparotomy, a distal pancreatectomy of the tail portion with an anti-leakage procedure on the cut surface of the pancreas. However, he underwent a distal pancreatectomy again on the neck portion of the pancreas because of a continuing pseudocyst with severe pain that could not be controlled with conservative managements. After that, his symptoms were improved and he returned to his daily life.

한국 아동학대의 현실