Injury Patterns among Individuals Diagnosed with Infantile Autism during Childhood: A Case-Control Study

Abstract

Background: To date, injury risk among people with infantile autism (IA) has been a relatively poorly researched issue. Objective: The purpose of our study was to compare the prevalence and types of injuries in a clinical sample of 118 patients diagnosed with IA during childhood with those of 336 age- and sex-matched controls from the general population. Method: All participants were screened through the nationwide Danish National Hospital Register. The average amount of time that the participants were observed was 30.3 years (range, 27.3 to 30.4 years), and the mean patient age at the end of the observation period was 42.7 years (range, 27.3 to 57.3 years). Results: Among the 118 patients with IA, a total of 52 (44.1%) were registered in the Danish National Hospital Register with at least one injury diagnosis. In the comparison group, 226 of 336 individuals (67.3%) had at least one such diagnosis. The difference is statistically significant (P < .0001; odds ratio, 0.4; 95% confidence interval, 0.3 to 0.6), and the nature of the injuries also seems to differ. Gender, intellectual level, and concurrent epilepsy were not predictive of injury risk. Conclusions: Our results lend support to the notion that injuries that require medical attention are not uncommon among an adult population of people diagnosed with IA during childhood, but they are less common than the rate found in a comparison group from the general population. It is proposed that a diagnosis of IA is related to the likelihood of institutional care, which may have a protective effect with respect to acute hospital use.