Introduction: Self-harm poses a significant health problem.In addition to the high human and financial burden of self-harm itself, individuals who engage in self-harm are at increased risk of repetition of self-harm, suicide and all-cause mortality.There are indications for differences in gender distribution, management and repetition rates between patients presenting to hospital with self-cutting and patients presenting with other forms of self-harm.However, large-scale national studies are lacking.The present study investigated differences in demographic characteristics and management of patients presenting to emergency departments following self-cutting versus patients presenting with other self-harm methods.Methods: Data on 63,154 emergency hospital presentations of self-harm involving 41,205 individuals were obtained from the National Registry of Deliberate Self-Harm Ireland for the study period 1st January 2003 until 31st December 2008.Information is routinely obtained on the following variables: gender, date of birth, area of residence, date and hour of attendance, whether patient was brought by ambulance, method(s) of self-harm (ICD-10 codes), drugs taken, medical card status, and recommended next care.Data on repetition are obtained by identifying patients whose gender, encrypted initials and date of birth are identical.Self-harm presentations were divided on the basis of whether they involved self-cutting only, self-cutting as one of multiple methods, or did not involve self-cutting.Results: Among the 13,113 presentations involving self-cutting, 52.7% involved self-cutting only, 36.1% involved two methods of self-harm and 11.2% involved three or more methods of self-harm.Self-cutting alone was significantly associated with male gender, younger age, and city residence, lower likelihood of consuming alcohol, presenting out-of-hours, and higher number of previous presentations.These factors were attenuated among presentations of self-cutting as one of multiple methods.The extent of medical treatment for self-cutting ranged from no treatment to steri-strips to sutures to referral for plastic surgery.Treatment received was significantly associated with gender, with males more likely than females to receive referral for plastics and females more likely than males to receive steri-strips or no treatment.The extent of treatment was also associated with age.More than 90% of the youngest patients received steri-strips or no treatment; in the other age-groups this proportion ranged from 58.0% to 65.3%.More lethal self-cutting was related to male gender, older age, not combining methods and lower likelihood of consuming alcohol.Self-cutting presentations had lower rates of general admission and higher rates of psychiatric admission when compared to all other DSH methods.Discussion: The demographic and presentation differences between self-cutting and other self-harm patients have important implications for the prevention and treatment of self-harm, and may be a reflection of psychological and psychiatric differences and corresponding divergent needs.Although recent years have seen an increase in research into self-harm that has certainly been facilitated by the adoption of a shared definition encompassing many different methods of self-harm, such a definition may introduce a danger of ignoring important differences between self-harm behavioursand their functions and consequences.