Injuries related to trampoline parks hit new heights

While children and teenagers accounted for most park injuries, there were also adult patients. If parents do decide to take their kids to trampoline parks, they should try to pick times when the parks are less crowded to avoid this issue, she said.

Kathryn Kasmire, the study’s lead author and a fellow in pediatric emergency medicine at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, said the idea for the inquiry came from experience in the emergency room, which she said is close to several trampoline parks. When they compared the kinds of injuries jumpers received at trampoline parks with those received on home trampolines, they found that the trampoline park injuries were more likely to require hospital admission, a measure of the seriousness of the damage, though they were less likely to involve head injuries.

Experts at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center analyzed a national injury database and found that yearly emergency room visits for trampoline park-related injuries have jumped 12-fold over the last five years.

Dislocated joints were more than twice as likely to occur at trampoline parks as at home, the study found.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children not use trampolines at home or in parks and says injury rates at trampoline parks should be monitored. Nevertheless, children accidents in house trampolines did not increase significantly between 2010 and 2014.

“What really made us want to study this is that we were surprised that some of the injuries we were seeing were pretty serious”.

“Don’t be lulled into a sense of complacency or a feeling of safety because there are extra people around watching the children”, Leaming-Van Zandt said.

Ray Pitetti, associate chief of the division of pediatric emergency medicine at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, said the study’s data coincide with injuries he sees in the emergency department among patrons of trampoline parks: sprains or strains, but also broken arms and legs and concussions. (And remember, these are approximately the number of injuries – the stats don’t count the kid who gets banged up and goes home). The floor though, can heighten the risk for other injuries if someone jumping lands between two trampolines, she said.

It was noted in the study that Dr. Kasmire and her team could not determine the likelihood of being hurt at a park but stated that it is obvious that bringing a kid to a place full of trampolines is a unsafe activity for children.

The groups said safety is always a priority and that it advocates for protective padding and supervision in trampoline parks.

This likely has a lot to do with the fact that trampoline parks have experienced huge growth during this time period: according to the International Association of Trampoline Parks, “the indoor trampoline park industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the amusement industry”, with over 550 indoor parks slated to have open by the end of 2015.

“We are actively engaged in programs aimed at promoting the safety and well-being of jumpers who visit our member parks”, the IATP said.

The recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends avoiding trampolines as a mean of recreation.

Nearly 9 percent of park injuries required hospital admission, compared with 5.2 percent of injuries from home trampolines. Their study, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, calls trampoline park injuries “an emerging concern”. Supervise your kids yourself, and make sure there’s just one jumper per trampoline.

He added: “Like any extreme sport that you do, you do it knowing you could get hurt”. But are trampoline parks safe for kids? The researchers say their data could help in developing uniform safety guidelines for trampoline parks. She added that protective padding must frequently be inspected, CBS News reported.