Scaphocephaly/"preemie head" Concerns

yinyang124

A little background: My boys were born at 34 weeks. J spent 20 days in the NICU and D spent 27. They're 13w actual, 7w adjusted now.

Our pedi has recently expressed concern over J's head shape- very slightly buldging forehead, long and narrow shape, slight misshapen in the back. She showed me where she can feel the hard ridge on top of his skull. Apparently, this is common in preemies, but she's sending him for scans and a 2nd opinion. When I looked it up, I came across the term "preemie head." Is this somethng that corrects itself or will surgery most likely be required? Cosmetically, I don't care. I'm very concerned about brain growth restriction.

 ETA: His head growth is normal, maybe above normal. At 2 month appt, it was in the 16 %, compared to 0% at 1 month. His height and weight are in the 1 %.

SBBBE

DS had the same exact thing.  We were given exercises and some other strategies that helped make some important but it still was pretty off so in the end we decided to go with a helmet.  He is currently still wearing it and has made a big improvement so far.

Did the pedi mention surgery? If a child is younger than 18 months, a helmet should work.  I have not heard of surgery being needed unless there is another problem.  

Missa_g

My A baby is in a helmet for plagiocephaly caused by torticollis.  Both my boys had torticollis but PT resolved it for my youngest and his flat spot went away.  We're very happy with the helmet.  Your kid is still young enough that repositioning and PT could definitely be a benefit.  Good luck!

chickaboo1974

Did she specifically say scaphocephaly?  Because feeling a hard ridge does not sound like how that was described to me when my 34 weekers were in the NICU.

A  ridge sounds more like Craniosynostosis.  Which does need to be corrected by surgery.

yinyang124

chickaboo1974:

Did she specifically say scaphocephaly?  Because feeling a hard ridge does not sound like how that was described to me when my 34 weekers were in the NICU.

A  ridge sounds more like Craniosynostosis.  Which does need to be corrected by surgery.

She did. From my personal research, scaphocephaly and sagittal craniosynostosis are the same thing. It sounds like "preemie head" is positional and the sutures don't actually  fuse, therefore easily corrected by PT/helmet/etc. We are going for a second opinion anyways though because 1) Our current pedi stops taking our insurance Feb 1 and 2) She has minimal preemie experience to begin with. We can feel the ridge on his skull though, which makes us think maybe she is not wrong in thinking it will need to be surgically corrected.

 

yinyang124

Thank you ladies for your insight. We're hoping it can be corrected with PT and a helmet. The thought of surgery on my LO breaks my heart. I'll post an update when we find out more information.

Mrs. Alice

Another helmet mama here.  My boys had plagiocephaly and brachycephaly essentially from having soft preemie heads and positioning.  They were about your twins age when we noticed the flat spot was getting bad on Miles.  When they were about 6 mo/3mo we took them for an evulation and turns out they both needed helmets.  They had Doc Bands through Cranial Tech and because we did it while they were still young, we caught them on a growth spurt and they only needed them for 6 weeks.  Let us know how everything goes.  I would definitely do the helmets again and am very happy with the results.