Original articleHow Do Children with Eating Disorders Differ from Adolescents with Eating Disorders at Initial Evaluation?
Section snippets
Subject Selection
We identified all patients aged 8–19 years evaluated in a treatment program for children and adolescents with ED at an academic medical center from January 1997 through August 2005. Charts were identified by searching medical records and clinical databases for all patients aged 8–19 years, diagnosed with AN, BN, or EDNOS. Diagnoses were made using DSM-IV criteria at presentation by a child psychiatrist expert in the assessment of children and adolescents with ED, and record review substantiated
Results
A total of 959 patients were analyzed: 109 (11.4%) patients under 13 years of age and 850 (88.6%) patients aged 13–19 years at presentation to our program. The mean age of the younger patient subset was 11.6 years (SD 1.2); the mean age of the older adolescent subset was 15.6 years (SD 1.4). Most of the young patients were prepubertal: 76.1% of young females (n = 91) were premenarchal, compared with 7.0% of older females (n = 773). SMR of breast/genitourinary and pubic hair was documented in
Discussion
This study is the first to describe a large sample of young children with different types of ED, and to compare them with older teens on multiple measures. Series of young patients with ED to date have focused on smaller samples of patients with AN, with “young” typically defined as prepubertal at time of onset. This literature suggests that children and young adolescents with ED are more likely to be given a diagnosis of EDNOS than AN or BN, due to the difficulty of younger patients meeting
Acknowledgments
Dr. Lock’s participation was supported by NIH grant K24 074467. Data collection was supported in part by the Pediatric Research Fund at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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