What type of study is this?

This is a Longitudinal data-linkage study study.

September 5, 2025Open Access

The Determinants of Assault-Related Attendances in Emergency Department: A longitudinal data-linkage study in Wales

Key Points

The study found that 1.8% of individuals had assault-related attendances, highlighting a need for targeted interventions.
Risk factors included male gender (odds ratio 2.03) and substance use (odds ratio 3.41) as significant contributors to assault-related attendances.
Utilizing a longitudinal data-linkage methodology, patient records were analyzed alongside socio-demographic and health factors.
The risk profile identified helps emergency departments better target individuals for hospital-based violence intervention programs.

Abstract

ObjectivesEmergency Departments (EDs) can identify individuals who are susceptible to recurring violence through assault-related attendances (ARA), presenting an opportunity to connect them with support services targeting modifiable risk-factors. This study aims to profile ARA patients' socio-demographic, emotional and neurodevelopmental disorders to strengthen Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (HVIPs) and prevent further harm. MethodThis longitudinal data-linkage study utilised the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage databank to identify patients who are present in the Emergency Department Dataset (EDDS) with one or more ARA between 2012 and 2024. Patient records were linked to other routine health and administrative datasets to determine socio-demographic information (e.g. age, gender) and diagnoses of neurodevelopmental conditions (autism spectrum disorder, learning disability (LD), personality disorder (PD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)), as well as mental-health, alcohol or substance use. Multivariable logistic regression models investigated risk-factors associated with ARA, while decision tree models visualised the hierarchy of these risk-factors. ResultsThe cohort comprised of 3,993,439 individuals, of which 50.1% were male, 27.9% were aged between 30 and 50 years, 70.1% lived in an urban area and 19.9% came from the most deprived neighbourhoods in Wales. During the observation period, 1.8% had (at least one) recorded ARA. Significant risk-factors for ARA included being male (odds ratio 2.03, 95% confidence interval 2.00 - 2.07), experiencing substance use (3.41, 3.32 - 3.49), common mental health issues (2.86, 2.81 - 2.91), ADHD (1.67, 1.61 - 1.74), PD (1.66, 1.59 - 1.73), having a record in the looked-after children database (2.55, 2.43 - 2.69), having an alcohol-related hospital admission (2.49, 2.43 - 2.55) and living in the most deprived neighbourhoods (2.26, 2.21 - 2.32). ConclusionThe findings highlighted the characteristics of individuals attending EDs for a violence-related injury. This risk profile offers insights to identify vulnerable individuals and can help HVIPs to focus on planning upstream support.

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Cite This Study

Bandyopadhyay et al. (Thu,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68bb3ef72b87ece8dc9577ed https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v10i4.3212

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