Head injury statistics
 

Here's a just-published study on head injury statistics that I found interesting:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...2.2019.1631483

Table 3 shows that overall floors cause more head injuries than bicycles in the 1-19 age group. And the combination of walls and floors leads bicycles in each of the age groups.

Table 2 shows that 17.1 + 17.2 = 34.3% of head injuries in the study group were caused by furnishings, fixtures, structures, and construction materials in the home.

Of course, I'm mindful that these numbers don't speak to the individual risk when actually participating in a given activity. Most of us will have a greater time exposure to our home than to the activity of cycling, and the study doesn't seem to be looking at how risky a specific activity is when actually partaken in, but rather at which activities contribute the greatest numbers of injuries to young people in the given age ranges.

Just thought I'd share. The numbers are interesting. I thought people here might be interested to see them.

Given that one sex doesn't actually participate in large numbers, and the amount of time involved in the activity, football is really the standout here.

The intro mentions that motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause, yet motor vehicles aren't included in the list of products, and it mentions that car seats are often involved in incidents not occuring in motor vehicles (falling off a shelf, for example). Not sure why they wouldn't want to look at the cars as products.

Yeah, and I guess football is somewhat controversial these days. I caught part of an NPR program recently during a long drive that talked about concussions and football. It was interesting listening to the different points of view.

I always thought it was funny to think about what it would sound like now if football had just been invented and someone was proposing to school administrators who had never seen it that they take it up as a school activity for children. Start with "we have them wear body armor and helmets and then run into each other as hard as possible".

...and that's the safe version!

Really this is evidence that humans that expect to live a hundred years should all wear helmets all the time

and also not eat, drink, or breathe ... :innocent:

That is
not eat junk or processed food,
drink clean water
breathe clean unpolluted air.

Or have fun and take your chances. One way or the other, you'll never get out of this world alive.

As Table 3 shows, in the sports/recreation product group, football (5.7%), bicycles (3.1%), and basketball (2.9%) contributed to the most TBIs. Beds (6.1%), chairs (2.3%), and tables (2.2%) accounted for the most TBIs in the home furnishing and fixtures product group. Floors (6.4%), stairs (4.6%), and ceilings/walls (2.3%) led to the most TBIs in the home structures and construction materials product group.

What stood out for me was that a very small percentage of kids play football, so the rate of football injuries among football players is much higher than the rate of football injuries in the general population. There are probably more cyclists than football players (just a guess), so cycling is probably somewhere in the middle. But I would certainly not conclude from these results that bikes are safer than floors.

I'm not a statistician, and I'm not sure it's possible to tease any useful information about the actual safety of cycling from this report. Granted the information is potentially useful for public health planning.

I agree with you. It's a subtle thing, but the report isn't looking at the safety of individual activities from the point of view of the participants. I know for example that I spend way more time on my floor than on my bike, so my floor is probably safer on a per hour basis.

Ok. Here's a question: If one were a public health official and wanting to reduce the quantity of head injuries, would it be sensible to choose the segment from this report having the largest quantity and to attack that segment first? Would it make sense to look at household injuries from flooring and furniture and so forth, and how to prevent those?

I guess I need to watch more FailArmy, because I feel like I haven't seen enough people hit their heads on the ceiling.

Not surprised that getting out of bed is almost twice as dangerous as riding a bike (I mean obviously it isn't, the number of cyclists relative to number of people who sleep in beds must be microscopic,) or that the most dangerous activity is "falling on the ground." Gravity, she is a cruel mistress.

Sure you'd want to look at the total of injuries from various causes, but that by itself isn't enough to tell you what could reduce the number most effectively. Injuries involving the bed for example, for 1 year and younger; maybe the head injuries come from falling out. Or banging his head on railings. Look at that more closely and I'll bet that you could eliminate a lot of those injuries.

But you need to consider individual risk also IMO. Addressing a microscopic chance of a fall, involving practically every floor that people walk on, would not be the most effective use of resources.

Not from this report alone. It's not just the lack of rate information, it's that we don't have any data telling us the likelihood of reduction of injury from effective products redesign. I'll leave flooring and furniture out of this because those are entirely too large categories to make any sort of meaningful generalizations (already making the problem with using these data self-evident), but even when it's as narrow as "car seats", the text states that one of the major categories of car seat injuries is when the parent places the baby in the car seat on a high shelf or the like, and then the baby falls off of that high shelf. We can't tell from the data whether there is any car seat engineering fix that would make it less likely for the seat to fall or to protect the baby better from the fall that didn't sacrifice effectiveness of the car seat in its primary function of protecting the child from the effects of auto accidents.

I think it's increasingly obvious, btw, that the only truly effective way to prevent brain injuries from football is not to play football. The basic risk of having people beat each other up for an hour is probably irreducible beyond a certain point that we've probably neared already.

As far as bicycles, I suspect we've gone about as far with helmets as we can, and that any improvements are likely to be incremental. Is there any possibility of a basic bicycle redesign that would make it less likely that a kid hits his/her head? I doubt it. I'd also like to know how many of these bicycle accidents are actually motor vehicle accidents--i.e., kid was riding a bike when struck by a car.

Very slight disagreement, because we're basically saying the same thing--railings and falling from child beds are where there has already been a lot of engineering, so there may not be a lot of interventions left to do. This category is clearly lumping in adult beds, and I'm pretty sure that the obvious interventions, having adults sleep on thin mattresses on the floor or routinely putting railings around adult beds, are probably not onse with serious probabilities of being adopted.

If I'm looking at this from a public health perspective, I would think it might(!) tell me that parent education about these hazards is a more likely effective strategy.

Just double checking. You are aware that the dataset is of children and adolescents from birth through 19 years?

-mr. bill

Sure you're just checking. What's your point? Did you miss the part where beds is a huge proportion in infants (25.4%) and decines to 9.7% for 1-4 yr olds, and is 4.1% for children 5-9, then drops off the list for anyone older?
Given how strict the requirements are for baby furniture (I have some knowledge of this), it's quite likely that some fairly high percentage of the 25.4% is occurring off of adult beds or baby furniture that isn't being used properly (siderails down, etc.). You do realize a lot of people sleep with their infants and toddlers in their beds, right? My suspicion is that you could probably prevent a lot more injuries by educating people about the hazards of letting babies sleep in adult beds than in redesigning baby beds as there has been so much work done in the baby bed design area already.

I think it's pretty safe to say that the 5-9 year olds are not falling out of baby beds with siderails and the like, btw.

That's no doubt true. But with "bed" being the top culprit for babies, I would be inclined to have a look at it anyway and find out if there is some commonality.

A strong possibility IMO. Maybe the beds are safe but the parents aren't using them, or are neglecting them. If it's the latter, is there some way to make the beds harder to neglect?