Trampolines are popular with children, but they're also responsible for a number of childhood injuries. Parents who don't allow their children anywhere near large trampolines should not be lulled into thinking they're safe using small, one-person trampolines either. A new study says these devices, intended for exercise, can be dangerous as well.
Researchers at Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio reviewed U.S. safety statistics on trampoline injuries for 1990 to 2002. They found that injuries resulting from the use of small trampolines were on the whole, less serious, but not less frequent.
The report says children hurt in small trampoline accidents tended to be younger than those injured while using the larger models. The most common injury was head cuts and scrapes. Of all the children hurt whole bouncing on the small trampolines, 32 percent were under the age of six.
Annual injuries from backyard trampolines have nearly doubled in the past decade.
A study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital and its pediatric unit, Hasbro Children's Hospital reviewed trampoline injuries to children from a sample of emergency departments across the United States.
According to the study, nearly 75,000 children on average were seen in emergency departments for trampoline injuries each year during 2001 and 2002. This represents a marked jump from the early- to mid-1990s, when a similar study showed an average of almost half the number of injuries each year. Most of the injuries, 91 percent, occurred at home.
Dr. James G. Linakis, a pediatric emergency physician at Hasbro Children's Hospital and an associate professor of emergency , says parents don't seem to have gotten the message that trampolines should not be used in the home environment.
"They should be used in very structured, well-monitored environments, with proper supervision. Frankly, that supervision probably doesn't and can't happen at home," he said.
The latest study, published in Pediatrics, recommends that children not be allowed to use backyard trampolines and that the sale of trampolines for private recreational use be stopped.
