Inclusion criteria

General criteria

Inclusion	Exclusion
Papers with all evidence types	Personal practice
English and non-English papers	Review papers
Papers from conferences – paediatric, radiology, orthopaedic	Management of fractures papers
Patients between 0-17 years of age	Papers where the population included adults and children
	Studies of non-abusive data only
	Methodologically flawed papers

1. Which fractures are indicative of abuse?

Inclusion	Exclusion
General inclusion criteria plus:	General exclusion criteria plus:
Comparative studies of children less than 17 years of age with fractures either abusive or non-abusive	Rank of abuse is 4 or 5 or mixed rank where relevant cases cannot be extracted
Non-comparative studies of other fracture types found in abuse where comparative data was unavailable	Studies addressing abusive / non-abusive fractures only
	Single case reports
	Studies of outcome or management of abusive fractures

2. What is the evidence for radiological dating of fractures in children?

Inclusion	Exclusion
General inclusion criteria plus:	General exclusion criteria plus:
Primary research addressing how you can date fractures radiologically in children up to 17 years of age	Underlying bone disease was present
	Criteria for dating was not detailed

3. What radiological investigations should be performed to identify fractures in suspected child abuse?

Inclusion	Exclusion
General inclusion criteria plus:	General exclusion criteria plus:
Children (0-17) who had radiological investigations to identify bone fractures in suspected child abuse	Studies where details on the yield from the investigations were not available
	Fatal abuse

4. Does cardiopulmonary resuscitation cause rib fractures in children?

Inclusion	Exclusion
General inclusion criteria plus:	General exclusion criteria plus:
External closed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)	Studies relating to complications or outcomes of CPR (other than rib fractures)
No underlying bone disease or child abuse as the cause of collapse	Inadequate quality of confirmation of fractures
Incidence of associated rib fractures was recorded	Inadequate quality of confirmation of fractures