Pediatrics
More Kids Hurt by Falling TVs
Published: Jul 22, 2013
The rate of child injury from falling televisions has increased by 95% over the past 22 years, researchers found.
From 1990 to 2011, the average annual injury rate attributable to televisions in children was 2.43 per 10,000 children younger than 18, according to Gary Smith, MD, of the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and colleagues.
Among children younger than 5, the number of injuries related to falling televisions increased by 125.5% over the 22 years, equivalent to an overall rate increase of 95.3%, they wrote online in the journal Pediatrics.
Prior research on this topic has shown that pediatric injuries stemming from televisions tipping over have gone up recently, with children ages 4 and younger at highest risk for injury.
The authors studied the epidemiology of television-related injuries though 380,885 reports from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System from children reporting to an emergency department for such an injury from 1990 to 2011.
The surveillance report included data on age, gender, injury diagnosis, injured body region, products involved, location of the injury, disposition from the emergency department, and circumstances related to the injury.
Based on injury circumstances, injuries were categorized as a television fall, patient striking a television, injury while moving a television, or other. These narratives also included furniture which was used to support the television, such as a dresser, entertainment center, shelf, table, cabinet, wall mount, or other support.
Televisions were also categorized as being 27 inches and larger or 26 inches and smaller.
Injury codes included laceration, contusion, soft tissue injury, fracture, strain, and other -- which included shocks, burns, dislocations, and dental injuries.
Mean patient age was 4.7, and children younger than 5 represented 64.3% of injured patients, while children ages 5 to 10 24.3% and those ages 11 to 17 made up 11.4% of injuries. Most of the children injured were male (60.8%).
Television-based injuries were mostly consistent over the study period.
Television falls were the most common type of injury, accounting for more than half of all injuries (52.5%), followed by striking a television (38.1%).
Falling television injuries increased significantly over the study period, from 0.85 per 10,000 children in 1990 to 1.66 per 10,000 children in 2011 (P<0.001).
Injuries from striking a television decreased significantly over the 22-year period by 71.9% from 1.53 injuries per 10,000 children in 1990 to 0.43 injuries per 10,000 children in 2011.
The rate of injuries associated with a TV falling from a dresser, bureau, chest of drawers, or armoire rose by a significant 344.1% during the study period, the authors noted.
"Despite the relatively low documentation ... of the type of furniture on which falling TVs were placed, the frequency of dressers/ bureaus/chests of drawers/armoires being used to support TVs (almost half of the cases in this study) is alarming," they wrote. "As noted in previous studies, children may pull dresser drawers open to use as stairs to help them reach the TV, potentially pulling both the dresser and TV over onto themselves."
Children were most commonly injured in the head and neck (63.3%), followed by the lower extremities (21.5%). Head and neck injuries were associated with a 36% increased likelihood of hospital admission (95% CI 1.03-1.80) compared with other areas of bodily injury.
Children younger than 5 were 36% more likely to receive a head or neck injury and 22% more likely to be injured by a falling television.
Over two thirds of injuries were lacerations or soft tissue injuries (36.7% and 35.1%, respectively), though few injuries required hospital admission or less-than-24-hour observation (2.6%).
The authors attributed the increased number of television fall injuries to the rising number of televisions in homes, though they cautioned that if that were the only cause of such injuries that injuries from striking a television would have also risen instead of going down.
"The disparity between injury rates associated with falling televisions and striking a television is provocative, especially given the more serious outcomes associated with falling televisions," they wrote, adding that the location of television placement may account for the differences in injury rates, as has the decline of cathode tube televisions for flat screen technologies.
The authors noted that their study was limited by potential underestimates of television-related injuries, absent data on fatalities, inconsistent amounts of details in recorded data, biases in descriptive data, and missing data on types of televisions responsible for injuries.
The study was supported by the Ohio State University College of Medicine.
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Primary source: Pediatrics
Source reference:
Smith GA, et al "Television-related injuries to children in the United States, 1990-2011" Pediatrics 2013; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2013-1086.
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