Emergency Room Season for Kids
With warmer temperatures come more
injuries, from bumps to broken bones, for children adjusting to growth spurts
By Sumathi Reddy in the Wall Street Journal
Spring is the season for broken
bones, bruises, bumps and sprains.
With more children finally free to
step outside after a winter cooped up indoors, more land in emergency rooms and
urgent care centers with injuries. Some are adjusting to new height and
strength after growth spurts. Others become victims of reckless horseplay or
unavoidable accidents.
Doctors say any risks are outweighed
by the need for children to get plenty of exercise. Simple rules of thumb can
help minimize potential injuries. They should remember proper footwear and
protect their heads with helmets on scooters and bikes, for instance. They
should also stay well-hydrated before and after playing.
Injuries start picking up in April,
says Karin Sadow, regional medical director for PM Pediatrics’s 16 urgent-care
offices in the New York metropolitan area. “School sports are in full swing and
the bikes come out of the shed,” she says.
By June last year the injuries PM
doctors treated were nearly double what they were in the winter. Though not all
injuries take place outside, doctors largely attribute the increase to children
being outside and more active. Most incidents occur with children between the
ages of 8 and 13.
Just in the past few weeks the
practices have seen a 10-year-old girl who fell off her scooter and sprained
her wrist; a lacrosse player with a finger fracture; a runner with a stress
fracture; a 21-month-old with a tibia fracture after going down a slide with
her aunt; a 5-year-old who fell off the monkey bars and suffered a grade-two
supracondylar, or elbow fracture; a baseball player with a mild concussion; and
a child bruised on a tire swing mishap, among others.
Ashleigh Mullins landed at a clinic
last week. On Wednesday the 10-year-old was at the playground after school in
Syosset, N.Y., playing with a Skip-It, a plastic hook that’s affixed to an
ankle and spun around while skipping.
“She stepped on it and rolled her
ankle, landing sideways,” says her mother, Laurie Mullins, who has two other
children and lives in nearby Farmingdale.
Ms. Mullins brought her daughter to
the PM Pediatrics in Syosset, where they determined she sprained her left ankle
and put an air splint on it, which she had to wear for three to five days. Last
summer Ashleigh suffered a growth plate fracture on her wrist after falling
while Rollerblading.
“I have three kids, and over the
years we’ve had fractured wrists and stuff like that, but nothing really
serious,” Ms. Mullins says. “Finally the weather did get warmer and now
everybody’s going outside and you do increase your chances of injury…or you’re
doing something you haven’t done in a couple of months and you’re a little
shaky.”
Ryan Goodwin, director at the Center
for Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, says adolescents
are generally more prone to injuries during growth spurts because, unlike adults,
children’s bones have growth plates, or specialized areas of cartilage that
allow for long bone growth.
“Cartilage is less structurally
sound than bone,” Dr. Goodwin says.
Furthermore, during a growth spurt,
adolescents have changes in their hormonal balance that makes the growth plates
slightly weaker, he says. And the long bone growth happens more quickly than
the muscle growth, so as the muscle is catching up there is a relative decrease
in flexibility. This can result in higher susceptibility to injury.
Children heal much more quickly than
adults when it comes to broken bones and the like. A wrist fracture in a 9- or
10-year-old, for example, usually takes four to six weeks and rarely requires
surgery, Dr. Goodwin says. An adult with a similar injury would likely require
surgery and 12 weeks of recovery.
That’s because children have better
local circulation, which promotes healing, and because they’re growing and
making new bone already.
Another factor with sports injuries
stems from more children specializing in single sports, experts say.
Overtraining one muscle group more than others raises the risk of injury.
This year’s especially long and cold
winter in many parts of the U.S. contributed to some student-athletes not being
able to train ahead of time, leading to more injuries this spring, says Larry
Cooper, head athletic trainer at Penn-Trafford High School in Harrison City,
Pa.
“We saw more injuries with track
athletes this year than ever before,” Mr. Cooper says. Out of 140 athletes who
run track, 22 have had injuries like shin and arch pains. “They’re engaging
their bodies in ways they weren’t prepared for,” he says.
Emergency room doctors say
playground and sports injuries are the most common that they see among
children, but injuries are usually not too serious.
Scooter injuries are common, since
children tend to be less likely to wear helmets when riding scooters as opposed
to bikes. Falls can result in broken arms or wrists or even mild concussions or
abdominal injuries from landing on handlebars.
Scooters “can go pretty fast,” says
Joan Shook, a pediatric emergency physician at Texas Children’s Hospital in
Houston. “When not well-balanced, children can fall and hit their heads.”
She recommends wearing a helmet and
protective gear like elbow and knee guards to avoid injury.
Trampoline injuries are also
extremely common, says Jahn Avarello, chief of the pediatric emergency
department at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y. He says on
average they see one every other day. “They can be arm injuries or simple
sprains,” he says. “Or sometimes falling out of a trampoline can cause a head
injury.”
Dr. Avarello says the most common
injury he sees is a broken forearm from falling on an outstretched arm when
running or riding a bike.
One of the most common injuries
Kathleen Berchelmann, a pediatrician at the pediatric emergency room at St.
Louis Children’s Hospital, encounters is foot injuries due to children wearing
inadequate shoes. She recommends avoiding Crocs or flip flops and making sure children wear
bump toe sandals.
“We see lots of bad toe injuries
from riding bikes with inadequate footwear,” she says. “Bump toe sandals are
adequate. You can run well and ride bikes in them, and you don’t need socks.”
Head injuries from falling off bikes
and play structures are also common and potentially very dangerous.
Experts say in some cases children
assume they still have a skill they had at the end of the previous summer—like
riding a bike or swimming—and learn the hard way that they’ve regressed over
the winter. Dr. Berchelmann recalls a case several years ago where a 4-year-old
who could swim the previous summer jumped in the water and had to be rescued.
Despite these dangers, experts
encourage children to challenge themselves outside. Reaching that next monkey
bar is an important part of a child’s maturation.
And the benefits of being outside
and getting physical activity far outweigh any risks. The risk of a lack of
physical activity, they say, is far greater: obesity.
Poster’s comment: Most of these injuries can be treated at a
level lower than a doctor.
Can you do so if need be?
No comments:
Post a Comment