Playground equipment blamed for rise in child head injuries

Traumatic brain injuries that occur in the playground are on the rise with monkey bars and swings being to blame.

A government study was conducted to assess the safety of playground equipment for children finding that most concussions result from playing on monkey bars and every child’s favorite – the swings. While the study found that most head injuries were mild, concussions can have the potential to develop into a more serious brain injury and believes more should be done in implementing health and safety in playgrounds, according to The Washington Post.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who published the study in the journal Pediatrics, looked at national injury data from 2001 to 2013 in children aged 14 and under. The data showed that nearly 215,000 children suffered an injury with 10 percent of those developing a traumatic brain injury from the accident.

The data showed, however, that there has been a significant rise in emergency room treatments in recent years. 2005 saw only 23 out of 100,000 children having severe injuries, whereas 2013 saw that jump to 48 out of 100,000. Children between the ages of five and nine were most likely to experience an injury, making up 51 percent of the data – 58 percent of those children injured were boys.

Dr. Tabitha Cheng of the UCLA emergency medicine department in Los Angeles who led the study with others says that the results from the data is similar to a Canadian study by Dr. Suzanne Beno which also showed a rise in concussions.

It is not known the cause of the spike in serious brain injuries but the researchers believe it could simply be parents being hyper aware of any head injury in their child and taking them in for examination. It could also be due to children using playgrounds more frequently.

“A rise in the rates of traumatic brain injury should concern everybody because traumatic brain injury is a public health burden,” states Beno, “I think it needs to be parsed out and studied a bit more in terms of how much is actual increasing rates of TBI and how much of that is more awareness.”

The researchers believe that supervision could be the key in decreasing potential accidents as well as making sure the playground equipment is in good condition, has no hard surfaces such as concrete, and that children play on equipment suitable for their age and height.