child sex-abuse cases - When a child is thought to have been sexually abused, a second medical exam may be key to picking up injuries and sexually transmitted infections.
The American Academy of Pediatrics already recommends that children being examined for sexual assault have a follow-up examination in the weeks afterward.
But until now, no studies had looked at the benefits of doing that. For the new document, researchers reviewed the records of 727 children and teenagers who were evaluated for sexual abuse or assault over a five-year period.
They found that one-quarter of the time, the patients' second examination changed the findings of the first.
In 18 percent of cases, there was a shift in the diagnosis of traumatic injuries.
