Mental Health

Trampolines are Dangerous for Your KIds: Experts Warn

By Drishya Nair | Update Date: Sep 24, 2012 08:01 AM EDT

Children and adults love trampoline games alike, and many households have trampolines.  However, irrespective of how tempting the game seems to be, doctors and experts warn parents of the dangers of the bouncing platforms, which accounted to about 100,000 injuries in 2009 alone.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement on Monday that the safety net added to trampolines in the recent years, are of little help.

NBC news quotes the case of an 8-year-old girl, Destini, who bounced off the backyard trampoline eight years ago and landed hard on her head and neck. Destini's mother Carolyn Prouty, who witnessed the fall, explained how her daughter was immediately rushed to the hospital with excruciating pain and numb arms.

"My first response was that she was going to be paralyzed, seeing how she landed," said Prouty, a nurse from Spokane, Wash.

Although Destini was found to have broken nothing, though it was enough for her mother to get rid of the trampoline.

Prouty had thought that as long her daughter was following the general instructions like only one child on the game at a time; there was nothing to worry about. However, it turned out that even with safety precautions, trampolines are dangerous, Dr. Michele LaBotz, a lead author of the new AAP statement and a sports medicine physician at Intermed Sports Medicine in Portland said according to NBC news.

Attempts by the trampoline industry to make it safer, like addition of nets, do not seem to be effective, LaBotz, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics executive council on sports medicine and fitness, said, "they only give a false sense of security to parents."

"Pediatricians need to actively discourage recreational trampoline use," said LaBotz.

"This is not a toy. It's a piece of equipment. We recommend that you not provide it for your family or your neighbors to use. But if you do use one, you need to be aware of the risks."

"I think parents see the soft springy mat and they think it's safe, like water," LaBotz said. "What they don't realize is that once you get it to bouncing, especially if there are multiple users, it can be dangerous. Bigger kids and adults like to rocket propel up the little kids, getting them to bounce higher than they would otherwise and if the kid comes down wrong, it is the same as falling 9 or 10 feet onto a hard surface," LaBotz added.

According to data from National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, 75 percent of trampoline injuries when there is more than one person jumping on the mat, and also, it is found that the smaller child was 14 times as likely as a larger one to be injured.

Sprains, strains and contusions are among the most common types of injuries in all age groups, comprising 37 to 39 percent of all injuries and can be potentially catastrophic, the authors reported according to the report.

According to findings by LaBotz and her colleagues, 1 in 200 trampoline injuries resulted in some sort of permanent neurologic damage. The tragedy is that in spite of injuries to family members or children, people still continue to have Trampolines in their household.

"There are a number of families, even those with kids who have had significant injuries, who decide they still want the trampoline as part of what they offer to their children," LaBotz said.

However, Dr Barbara A Gaines does not seem surprised.

"This is something kids really like," Dr. Barbara A. Gaines, director of trauma and injury prevention at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said.

"It's fun and it's something you can do in your backyard. It doesn't have a motor attached. And all of that give parents a false sense of security, especially when you add in safety devices like nets. But this statement is highlighting the fact that there are no data showing that they make it any safer."

It is important that parents recognize and realize the dangers of this seemingly fun-filled bouncing game.

"When individual families come in with an injured child, it seems to them to be like one of those freak things," Gaines said. "Everything was fine and then all of a sudden something happened. But these are not just accidents. There is a pattern to them and there's something we can do to prevent them. It's not that we don't want kids to have fun. But injury shouldn't be an expected part of childhood."

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