Originally published on Cornerstone, the CHOP Research Blog

About 10 percent of high school girls and half as many high school boys report that they have been sexually assaulted in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys. But when these young victims come to pediatric emergency rooms,, they are not consistently getting recommended tests and treatment, according to new research from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“Our study was remarkable in that there was so much variation in the care adolescents received after sexual assault,” said Samantha Schilling, MD, MSHP, an assistant clinical professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine who is first author of the study, conducted when she was a fellow at CHOP and at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania (LDI). “While overall performance wasn’t ideal, there were also wide ranges in testing and treatment for infections and pregnancy.”