Study - Autistics 3 times more likely to die from injury

Post Reply New Topic

Preventable injuries often lead to death among people with autism, a new study says. They are three times more likely than the general population to die because of injuries, according to the study, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Public Health.

For children and young teens with this developmental disability, the numbers are more striking: They are 40 times more likely to die from injury than the general child population, researchers said. Drowning is the most common fatal injury among children with autism.

The researchers thumbed through more than 39 million death records filed over a 15-year period ending in 2014. By screening the codes entered onto each death certificate, Li and Guan were able to identify those who had been diagnosed with autism. They pinpointed just 1,367 individuals with a recorded diagnosis of autism, 1,043 of whom were male.

They found that more than a quarter (28%) of the people with autism died due to injury -- three times the percentage of the general population -- and that more than 40% of these deaths occurred in their homes or residential institution.

The average age when people with autism died due to an injury was about 29, compared with an average of nearly 55 for the general population.

Suffocation (when oxygen cannot enter the body), followed by asphyxiation (when oxygen is lacking in the body) and drowning caused most deaths. Combined, these three causes accounted for nearly 80% of fatal injuries in people with autism.
Journal Article from paid site
"Injury deaths in autistic adults are disproportionately due to asphyxiation and suffocation, and injury deaths in autistic children are much more likely caused by drowning," said Li, who is also a professor of epidemiology at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.

Children with autism 40 times more likely to die from injury, study says - CNN



The results are probably skewed because the deceased autistics who were studied were overwhelmingly male and males die from injury at a higher rate then the general population. Also the lack of adult diagnosis (at the beginning of the 15 year period studied this issue was even more acute) probably skews the results. That said you need to be very careful about autistic kids and water. This study only validates what has been known for a long time. As for the adults like everything with Autistic adults, a lot more study is needed.

Drowning is the most common fatal injury among children with autism.

I wonder if clumsiness is a factor in all this.

I can well imagine that being a factor. I've had many tumbles thanks to tripping over my own feet or failing to steer around obstacles. Inattention might be another factor - I've stepped out into traffic many times because I was daydreaming while my legs just carried on walking. I marvel at how lucky I've been never to have got anything more than cuts and bruises - so many times, it could easily have turned out much more serious.