Purpose
Several lines of evidence suggest intimate partner violence (IPV)as one of the most important cause of violence against women.
Focusing on the role of the radiologist in studying IPV in a cohort of Italian women,
the purpose of thiswork is to describe some variables,
such as locations and radiological pattern of injury in IPV,
comparing them with assaulted by strangers as control groups.
We also evaluated some descriptive variables like the time between violence and the radiological examination and the presence of clinical-radiological dissociation.
Methods and Materials
Data were retrospective gathered from reports to the court during a 6-years period,
from August 2006 to August 2012,
in the Sant’Andrea Hospital emergency ward,
Rome.
We identified 200 female patients subjected to IPV,
which have been assaulted by their partner,
ex-partner or blood relative.
IPV condition was diagnosed basing on history and clinical examination performed by emergency physician,
psychiatrist or gynaecologist in the emergency department.
We evaluated relevant data regarding age,
nationality,
severity code,
cause of injury,
site of injury and other associated conditions...
Results
Demographic data and gravity code were summarized in the Table I.
The main difference between the groups for what concerns descriptive data (Tab.
II) is the time to presentation in ED.
It’s clear that the majority of women (51%) referred the emergency room with a longer delay than 24 hours,
while in the other two groups about 91% of the patients referred to emergency room within 24 h ( p<0,0001).
Subgroup analysis (Tab IV) shows that pregnant women (Tab IV) (16pz) go first in the...
Conclusion
The radiographic evaluation of these clinical settings,
let us conclude that the role of the radiologist,
as in the child abuse,
is to identify the possible signs of violence,
first of all,
according with the physician,
the clinical-radiological discrepancy,
where the entities of the lesions are too serious instead the traumatic event reported,
or reported by other persons near the victim.
One important point is to identify the possible spy of continuous bad treating,
the presence of old fractures and new fractures could be a...
References
1 Wu V.,
Huff H.,
Bhandari M.
(2010) Pattern of physical injury associated with intimate partner violence in women presenting to the emergency department: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Trauma Violence Abuse.
11(2):71-82.
2 ISTAT's report 2006
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