The medical and social service records of the 130 battered children under 10 years of age admitted to San Francisco General Hospital during a six-year period, July 1, 1965, to June 30, 1971, were reviewed. Only children with physical injuries were included. A control group was selected from concurrent admissions. The findings showed a steadily rising number of admissions for child abuse. Many of the children suffered from emotional, physical and medical neglect as well as intentional trauma and 44% had been abused previously. Six children died. Sixty-three percent of the battered children were less than 2 years old. Their parents were significantly younger than parents of controls and also much more transient. White children rather than nonwhite children were battered more often than expected when compared to the ethnic distribution of the control group.
In our report of battered children admitted to San Francisco General Hospital we used as controls children hospitalized for other causes. This methodology was adopted so that the abused and control children would both be drawn from the same racially mixed, indigent part of the population that traditionally utilizes our hospital and therefore would be likely to have in common important socioeconomic features, thereby minimizing bias. However, as Dr. Stover correctly points out, all potential bias was not eliminated.
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