Head Injuries in Infants: a Closer Look at Baby-walkers, Stairs and Nursery Furniture

Skull fractures, concussions and broken bones are common injuries when children not yet able to walk utilise infant walkers and autumn downwardly stairs. Mint Images/Getty Images hide caption

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Mint Images/Getty Images

Skull fractures, concussions and broken bones are mutual injuries when children not still able to walk utilise infant walkers and fall down stairs.

Mint Images/Getty Images

Watching an baby propel herself across the floor on wheels in a saucer-shape infant walker may be as entertaining as a comedy episode. But because hospital emergency rooms treat more than 2,000 babies a year for injuries sustained while using these walkers, American pediatricians are repeating their decades-former call for a ban.

"I view infant walkers every bit inherently unsafe objects that take no benefit whatsoever and should not exist sold in the U.South.," says Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, a pediatrician who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Injury, Violence and Toxicant Prevention.

More than than 230,000 children nether 15 months old were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments for skull fractures, concussions, broken bones and other injuries related to infant walkers from 1990 through 2014, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics published Mon.

The walkers are designed to mobilize babies not still able to walk on their own, just moving on four wheels sometimes sends them on dangerous paths or tumbling down stairs.

Pediatricians accept long warned against using baby walkers, and consumers groups joined them to phone call for a ban in 1992. Publicity near the hazards has led some parents to stop using infant walkers and manufacturers to voluntarily tighten safety standards. In fact, the number of injuries related to baby walkers dropped dramatically from nearly 21,000 in 1990 to 3,200 in 2003, the written report notes.

In 2010, the U.S. Consumer Product Safe Commission strengthened safety requirements on the manufacture and testing of infant walkers, such every bit installing brakes to forestall stair falls. Injuries dropped an additional 23 percent in the four years after the federal mandatory safety standards took event compared with the iv years prior, the report plant.

The study is the start to examine the bear upon of these regulations on emergency room visits. The researchers conclude that the rules probably slowed the number of injuries, merely thousands of children are however getting hurt.

"Despite this swell success, there are yet two,000 children a year beingness treated for injuries, many of them serious injuries, in emergency departments," says Dr. Gary Smith, the written report's senior author and the manager of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "Therefore, we back up the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics that babe walkers should not be sold or used. In that location's absolutely no reason these products should still be on the marketplace."

Smith and Hoffman, who practices at the Oregon Wellness and Sciences University in Portland, concord that the study provides further proof that the CPSC should follow Canada's lead and ban the industry, sale and import of infant walkers. Canada banned the devices in 2004.

The CPSC, an independent government rubber agency comprising five presidential appointees, notes that the report shows that injuries have decreased significantly since the 2010 regulation. "CPSC continues to monitor the products' safety," information technology says in a statement to NPR.

But doctors say the harm infant walkers can do to children's brains and bodies is not worth the take a chance of keeping them on the market place. Smith has treated babies who landed caput-beginning on concrete after falling down a flight of stairs while strapped into an infant walker. So has Dr. Jerri Rose, a pediatric emergency physician and professor at Example Western Reserve Academy School of Medicine in Cleveland.

Rose, who was not involved with the study, says she has seen a slight drop in the number of babies coming into the hospital later on being injured in infant walkers. Merely she continues to care for infants who get into accidents in walkers.

"They're actually not safe," she says, peculiarly because parents often use them as baby sitters so they tin can turn away and focus on other tasks.

The walkers can allow babies to toddle into areas they normally could not attain — stairways, pools, bathtubs and kitchens. Some take drowned, and some have suffered burns afterwards pulling humid food off stoves, Rose says.

A previous investigation identified eight babies who died from 2004 to 2008 as a result of injuries sustained in babe walkers.

Smith estimates that babies strapped into infant walkers can travel four feet in 1 second — faster than their parents.

"Parents bought the myth that if they watched their children advisedly they wouldn't get into problem," he says. "Just that was a myth."

Besides, many parents mistakenly believe that baby walkers can speed their children'south ability to walk. Merely studies have shown that they might slow motor evolution, Rose says.

Many families still purchase babe walkers despite the warnings, though, and some families hand them downwards from generation to generation, the authors of the Pediatrics report write. Stores stock a colorful selection of walkers decorated with an array of animals and Disney or Sesame Street characters.

Every bit a safer alternative, Rose recommends stationary activity centers, which provide babies entertainment without mobility.

Information technology'southward non only infant walkers that cause injuries. Improper use of infant walkers, baby carriers, strollers, changing tables and bathroom seats brings children three years or younger into U.South. hospitals to exist treated for injuries every eight minutes, a recent study showed, and these injuries are on the rise.

Ronnie Cohen is a Northern California journalist who frequently writes about wellness. Follow her on Twitter @ronnie_cohen.

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