Assaults at schools send 90,000 kids to ER each year, study finds

For the report, which was published online Jan. 13 in the journal Pediatrics, the researchers looked at statistics regarding emergency-room visits by young people in 66 U.S. hospitals from 2001 to 2008. They then estimated the number of injuries nationwide during that time based on those limited statistics.

Overall, more than 7 million ER visits were made because of injuries at school during the eight-year study period. More than 700,000 of those injuries were considered deliberate, the researchers said, accounting for about 92,000 ER visits a year on average.

And nearly all—96 percent—of the injuries were from assaults, rather than self-harm or harm from someone like a police officer, the researchers said. This led to the conclusion that school assaults were behind an average of 88,000 ER visits a year.

The researchers found that kids aged 10 to 14, non-whites and boys had higher risks of being injured intentionally at school compared to kids of other age groups, whites and girls, respectively. 

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-01-assaults-schools-kids-er-year.html

Here's a link to the abstract in Pediatrics: Emergency Department Visits Resulting From Intentional Injury In and Out of School