Children with an intellectual disability or autism are more likely to be admitted to hospital than other children, new research shows.
The study looked at more than one million hospital admission records from over 400,000 Western Australian children, and found that children with severe intellectual disability were hospitalised ten times more often than the general population.
Children with autism were found to be twice as likely to require hospitalisation.
Further research will investigate how many hospital admissions relate to underlying medical conditions such as obesity, epilepsy or gastrointestinal problems, and look at ways to reduce the need for hospital visits.
Read more at The University of Western Australia