Toppling TVs Causing More and More Injuries to Children

Televisions topple over on thousands of toddlers each year, sometimes causing head injuries severe enough to result in death, Canadian researchers are reporting.

Nearly all of the fatalities were due to brain injuries.

“How the WRHA tracks injuries, they maybe haven’t specifically earmarked this is a TV-related injury; probably because it’s not happening as much as it could be in other areas”, said Healthy Living Minister Deanne Crothers.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Michael Cusimano, a professor of neurology, education and public health at the University of Toronto and a neurosurgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital also found that many kids are left unsupervised around a big television that is not properly secured.

“The frequency of these injuries has increased in the last decade, as TV sets have become increasingly large and more affordable in many countries”, the study said, according to the Daily Mail.

Children 1 to 3 years old are the most susceptible to injury, according to Cuismano. Often the injuries occurred when toddlers climbed onto furniture to reach a toy or bumped into unstable TV bases. The children’s short stature makes head injury likely when a TV set topples.

Avoid placing toys or remotes on top of TVs.

Wolfson added: “It just takes five minutes to anchor TVs and furniture to the wall…The solution is so simple”. Dressers and other furniture not created to support TVs were commonly involved in the TV-toppling incident.

The authors recommend parents push TVs away from the edge of a stand or table and warn their children about the dangers.

The problem goes beyond TVs, says Scott Wolfson, communications director for the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission.

In the USA, 99 percent of households have a TV, and toddlers spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of it, he said.

“The first point of contact as the TV comes down, is on the child’s head”.

“Too many children are sustaining head trauma from an easily preventable TV toppling event”, said Dr. Cusimano.

The study, published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, found that 84 percent of these injuries happen at home. Of these, three-fourths were not witnessed by adult caregivers.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed information from 29 studies on TV-related injuries in children, conducted mainly in the United States and Canada.

To get a better sense of the cause of the accidents and how they might be prevented, Cusimano and his coauthor scoured the medical literature looking for studies that examined injuries caused by TVs. At least half of injuries reported in the studies were to the head and neck, including bleeding in the ear, nose and throat, skull fractures and bleeding within the skull (intracranial bleeding).