Emergency Department Visits for Child Sexual Abuse

These authors used the National Emergency Department Sample (a large ED administrative data set) to estimate the number of ED visits for child sexual abuse from 2010 to 2016. The main outcome, a diagnosis of “confirmed sexual abuse,” was defined as one of two International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes: 995.53 for ICD-9 and T74.22XA for ICD-10.

Among more than 190 million ED visits by children (age <18 years), visits for “confirmed sexual abuse” increased from 6.93 to 11.97 per 100,000 children from 2010 to 2016. The authors suggest that the increase might be due to increased use of the ED by adolescents, increased awareness of sexual abuse, or increased sex trafficking.