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CINCINNATI — Injuries due to falls from playground equipment result in a higher proportion of severe injuries than either bicycle or motor vehicle crashes, according to a new Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati study of emergency department visits throughout the United States.
Injury prevention efforts targeting schools and 5- to 9-year-old children may have the greatest impact in reducing emergency visits for playground injuries, according to Kieran J. Phelan, M.D., the study’s lead author and a physician in the division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s.
The study is published in the current edition of Ambulatory Pediatrics.
“Although visits to emergency rooms by children and adolescents for injuries due to falls from playground equipment appear to be decreasing, they remain a common unintentional mechanism of injury,” says Dr. Phelan. “Most of the injuries were minor, but a higher proportion of playground injuries were moderate to severe compared to injuries due to motor vehicles, bicycles or all falls.”
Full Story: Children make 200,000 ED visits each year in US due to playground injuries