查看文章

Background

Child abuse is a serious threat to the physical and psychosocial well-being of the pediatric population. Musculoskeletal injuries are common manifestations of child abuse. There have been multiple studies that have attempted to identify the factors associated with, and the specific injury patterns seen with musculoskeletal trauma from child abuse, yet there have been no large studies that have used prospectively collected data and controlled comparisons. The purpose of our study was to describe the patterns of orthopaedic injury for child abuse cases detected in the large urban area that our institution serves, and to compare the injury profiles of these victims of child abuse to that of general (accidental) trauma patients seen in the emergency room and/or hospitalized during the same time period.

Methods

This study is a retrospective review of prospectively collected information from an urban level I …