Prevalence of strangulation in survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Objectives: Both sexual assault (SA) survivors and domestic violence (DV) survivors are populations at risk of strangulation injury. Our goal was to identify the prevalence of strangulation in patients who are survivors of SA and DV, identify presence of lethality risk factors in intimate partner violence, and assess differences in strangulation between SA and DV populations.

Methods: We reviewed all patient encounters from our health system's SA/DV forensic nurse examiner program from 2004 to 2008.