Mark Dias, MD, FAAP

Professor, Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery

Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State

L5 DIFFERENTIATING VENOUS SINUS THROMBOSIS FROM ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA

M5 DIFFERENTIATING ACUTE, SUBACUTE AND CHRONIC SUBDURAL HEMORRHAGE

Dr. Dias is Professor of Neurosurgery at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, and Vice Chair for Clinical Neurosurgery and Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Dr. Dias is the architect of The Upstate New York Shaken Baby Syndrome Education Program. Begun in 1998 in Upstate New York, the program is a hospital based parent education program that seeks to remind all parents of newborn infants born in an 8 county region about the dangers of violent infant shaking. This program has, since its inception, resulted in a 50% reduction in incidence of abusive head injuries both in the original 8 counties of Western New York as well as the adjacent 9 counties of the Finger Lakes Region; the results were published in Pediatrics.

Based upon these pilot results, Dr. Dias has initiated a much larger program throughout the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania which is being evaluated. The program has served as a model for prevention of abusive head injuries in many states and several countries. Dr. Dias is the recipient of an Excellence in Child Abuse Prevention award from Prevent Child Abuse New York, and a Commissioner’s Award from the New York State Administration on Children, Youth and Families for his work in the prevention of abusive head injuries.

Dr. Dias has also written articles and presented nationally and internationally concerning demographics, radiography, and controversies in Abusive Head Trauma.