A new look at child abuse reports suggests there may have been a small but worrying rise in injuries to babies over the past decade or so. [A] report published ... in the journal Pediatrics ... contradicts government data collected over the same time. It's still happening and that's a concern, says Dr. John Leventhal of Yale University, who led the study. Maybe parents are doing better and hurting their children less in general, but there is a small group where there continue to be substantial injuries that end in hospitalization," Leventhal said. Leventhal and colleague Julie Gaither looked at statistics on children admitted to hospitals for serious injuries. They said they found a nearly 11 percent increase over 12 years in serious injuries to babies a year old and younger. This is at the same time that two major national surveys of child abuse found decreases of between 55 percent and 23 percent in child abuse injuries overall, for all ages, between 1997 and 2009. It's important to point out that each study goes to different sources for data -- this week's study looks at hospital admissions, while the government studies examined reports of abuse filed to Child Protective Services and other agencies by doctors and other sources. Child abuse is a serious problem in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 740,000 children and youth are treated in hospital emergency departments for injuries resulting from violence every year.