Helmet Therapy for Infant Positional Skull Deformation Discouraged

In a recent study, researchers from the Netherlands assessed 84 babies who had moderate or severe positional skull deformation to determine the benefit of helmet therapy for infants with flat-head syndrome. From the age of six months, half of the infants were required to wear custom made closely fitting helmets for 23 hours per day, for a six-month period. The remaining infants had no treatment at all. After measuring the head shape of all the infants once they reached age two, the research team discovered that the infants who wore the helmets showed no significant improvements compared with those who received no treatment. Helmet therapy led to 25.6 percent of infants making a full recovery from their positional skull deformation, while 22.5 percent of infants who received no treatment made a full recovery, which the researchers deemed as “no significant difference” between groups. To read more about this study, click here.