Skip to Main Content
Skip Nav Destination

Playgrounds and Nonfatal Traumatic Brain Injury: An Unwelcome Combination Whose Prevalence Needs to Decrease :

May 16, 2016

It’s been a while since we ran an article on playground injuries Allen et al.

It’s been a while since we ran an article on playground injuries Allen et al. (10.1542/peds.2012-0643), and after we had previously published on this topic, there was a lot of attention paid in the national media to enhancing the safety of equipment and playground surfaces. Unfortunately, it appears that since that time, playground accidents have not decreased but increased—at least in terms of those resulting in traumatic brain injury in children.

This conclusion stems from a study being released this week by Cheng et al. (peds.2015-2721) who used the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program and looked at nonfatal playground-related traumatic brain injury (TBI) over that period per 100,000 population. The authors provide an enormous amount of data on this topic ranging from injury trends over time (which are increasing) and then more specifically age breakdown, as well as the types of playground injuries causing nonfatal TBI (monkey bars and swings leading the list).

The authors speculate on why the injury rates are increasing and offer some preventive solutions that take advocacy from all of us to implement in our local neighborhoods. Have you looked into the safety of your neighborhood playground?  After reading this study, you will hopefully want to slide right into advocating for even safer equipment, surfaces, and even teaching your patients and their parent’s key roles they can play in insuring better playground safety.  If you have advocated for playground safety changes in your own community, we’d love to hear more by sharing a response to this blog, adding a comment to the online-posted article, or sharing a post on our Facebook or Twitter pages.

Close Modal

or Create an Account

Close Modal
Close Modal