<Kids Safety devices>

Safety Devices Saving Kids'

By Ed Susman, MedPage Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Automobile child seats and bicycle helmets - safety devices designed to save kids' lives -- apparently are doing just that. Traumatic injuries to children have been remained constant through the 10-year period. The lowest year was 1994 with 1,432 childhood trauma cases; the highest was 2001 with 1,869 trauma cases.

In 1994, the electronic database of Los Angeles County showed that 55 children out of the 1,432 trauma cases involving individuals under age 14 were using seat belts. In 2004, the database showed that 176 children out of 1,575 trauma cases were using seat belts.

Similarly, the number of children in baby car seats involved in injury accidents increased from 23 in 1994 to 68 in 2004; the use of safety helmets by bicyclists or skateboarder or skaters increased from 15 in 1994 to 56 in 2004.

The impact of passenger seat airbags has yet to be felt in the trauma cases, Dr. Mink said, due in part to the fact that tens of thousands of cars in the Los Angeles area are older vehicles that were built before multiple airbags were included. "We expect to see the airbag impact on trauma in future years."

"The bottom line here is that safety works," Dr. Mink said during his poster presentation discussion at The American Academy of Family Physicians held on October 2005

In his statistics, there were two child trauma incidents in 1994 in which an airbag deployed compared with 26 in 2004, an increase but still not great numbers.

Arno Zaritsky, M.D., chief of pediatrics at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who moderated the poster presentations, suggested that additional data could have made the results more impressive. He noted that the population of Los Angeles has markedly increased in the past decade.

"I would think that if you calculated the per capita rates, the reductions due to safety modifiers might be even more robust," Dr. Zaritsky said. He also suggested that if the data could determine which trauma incidents were motor vehicle accidents, as opposed to other injuries due to falls or other violence, the impact of the safety modifiers might also be enhanced.

This is article is an extract from The American Academy of Family Physicians 2005 Scientific Assembly held San Francisco on October 2005. For the complete conference report, please visit: http://www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/preventiveCare/tb/2476

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