Incidence of oronasal haemorrhage in infancy presenting to general practice in the UK.

The frequency of oronasal haemorrhage in infancy was estimated from two national GP research databases (6% UK population). When a case was identified, other presentations in the child over the first year were available from one dataset. In the first year haemoptysis is rare. In contrast, epistaxis (7-20 cases of per 10,000 infants) was 10 times more common, and 14.3% of these infants had an injury at some other point in infancy, (four times greater than the general population). In general practice epistaxis may herald other trauma presentations, implying that such infants may be part of a high-risk group for injury.