Trampolines Are A Danger To Kids

The American Academy of Pediatrics have said trampolines are too dangerous for children to use. The last time there has been complete data for trampoline injuries among kids was in 2009. There were more than 100,000 injuries. With trampolines becoming ever more popular that number could only increase. Click below to read more.

Jason J.

Trampolines are too dangerous for children to use, the American Academy of Pediatrics said Monday. Citing nearly 100,000 injuries in 2009, the academy issued the warning in a statement published in Pediatrics and noted that the safety nets added in recent years don’t make much of a difference.

That makes a lot of sense to Carolyn Prouty.

Prouty will never forget the day, eight years ago, she saw her 8-year-old daughter Destini bounce off the backyard trampoline and land hard on her head and neck. Prouty rushed over to find her daughter in excruciating pain, arms numb.

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

Destini was airlifted to the hospital where doctors determined that she hadn’t broken anything, but had sustained a concussion and a strained neck. But that was enough for Prouty. “It was a big relief to know that she was fine, but I got rid of the trampoline,” she said.

Destini had been showing her mom gymnastics moves she’d been practicing when the accident happened. Like many parents, Prouty had assumed that as long as her daughter followed general safety rules such as only one child on the trampoline at a time, Destini would be fine. But even when safety precautions are taken, trampolines can still be dangerous, said Dr. Michele LaBotz, a lead author of the new AAP statement and a sports medicine physician at Intermed Sports Medicine in Portland, Me.

And attempts by the trampoline industry to make things safer, like the addition of nets, don’t seem to have made much difference, LaBotz said. They do, however, tend to lull parents into a false sense of security.

“Pediatricians need to actively discourage recreational trampoline use,” said LaBotz, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics executive council on sports medicine and fitness. “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.”

Parents mistakenly see trampolines as benign playthings, LaBotz said.

“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.”

In fact, data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System show that most – 75 percent – of trampoline injuries occur when multiple people are jumping on the mat. In those cases, the smaller child was 14 times as likely as a larger one to be injured.

NBC News