Trampoline Falls Injure Almost 300K a Year, Most Of Them Kids
It happened in our neighborhood.
A tween girl was jumping on a neighbor's trampoline when she was double-jumped by another kid, fell and broke her ankle. This was particularly heart-breaking because she was a star athlete and now, two years later, the damage may be permanent.
According to newswise.com, trampoline accidents sent an estimated 288,876 people, most of them children, to hospital emergency departments with broken bones from 2002 to 2011.
"Including all injuries, not just fractures, hospital emergency rooms received more than 1 million visits from people injured in trampoline accidents during those 10 years, boosting the emergency room bills to just over $1 billion, according to the study," the Web site reports.
About 60 percent of the fractures were upper-extremity injuries, notably fingers, hands, forearms and elbows. Lower-extremity fractures most commonly were breaks in the lower leg -- the tibia and fibula -- and ankles. Just over 4 percent involved fractures to the spine, head, and ribs and sternum. An estimated 2,807 spinal fractures were reported during the period studied.
A tween girl was jumping on a neighbor's trampoline when she was double-jumped by another kid, fell and broke her ankle. This was particularly heart-breaking because she was a star athlete and now, two years later, the damage may be permanent.
According to newswise.com, trampoline accidents sent an estimated 288,876 people, most of them children, to hospital emergency departments with broken bones from 2002 to 2011.
"Including all injuries, not just fractures, hospital emergency rooms received more than 1 million visits from people injured in trampoline accidents during those 10 years, boosting the emergency room bills to just over $1 billion, according to the study," the Web site reports.
About 60 percent of the fractures were upper-extremity injuries, notably fingers, hands, forearms and elbows. Lower-extremity fractures most commonly were breaks in the lower leg -- the tibia and fibula -- and ankles. Just over 4 percent involved fractures to the spine, head, and ribs and sternum. An estimated 2,807 spinal fractures were reported during the period studied.
"Fortunately, there were fewer spine injuries than might have been expected, but those can be catastrophic," newswise quotes Meagan Sabatino, clinical research coordinator for pediatric orthopedic surgery and a study co-author.
While the average age for most of the injuries was about 9 years old, the average age for spine and head injuries was substantially higher at 16.6 years old. "They're probably jumping higher, with more force," says the study's lead author, Randall T. Loder, M.D., chair of the IU School of Medicine Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a surgeon at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.
Our tween was 11. Two other girls we know her age developed concussions from falls on a trampoline.
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