Abstract

Background: Child Abuse has become a worried trouble in public health. Its detection is difficult and hard because child abuse usually  happens in child`s home and moreover is committed by relatives    
Objective: The aim of this study is to carry out an approximation to ability detection of child abuse by an out of hospital emergency medical service (SUMMA-112)
Methods:  Descriptive statistical analysis. Observational study of raw data from the whole pediatric medical histories, diagnostic codes CIE-10 of child abuse, collected from 2008 to 2011. 
Results: Prevalence of Child Abuse detected by SUMMA-112 was 0.83%. Male 38.3% (n=41); Female 61.7% (n=66). The most frequent diagnostic code in our survey was emotional mistreatment. On the contrary, in-hospital most frequent diagnostic codes are physical mistreatment and sexual abuse and the lesser diagnostic code detected is the neglect.
CONCLUSIONS: Detection of child abuse is not enough effective yet despite the most number of clinical cases are in children`s houses. The making of an appropiate questionary and developing skils on the part of professionals, are recommended.