It is impossible to avoid childhood injuries. Due to lack of ability to identify between safety and danger, injuries are a common thing for children. There are many types of injuries that can be experienced by children such as bruises, fractures, burns, falls, cuts, scratches and etc.
Below are 5 most common injury a child can get:
- Burns
Burns can be further divided into many types such as sunburn, burn caused by hot liquid or steam, electrical burn, fire burn, burn by cigarette and other hot objects such as lamp, stove, heater or etc. Burns are the most common injury reported in childhood with most being unintentional. This is because children have difficulty differentiating hot surfaces or substances by sight but as we know, children love to grab or touch things. Thus, burns have a higher possibility to occur in childhood as compared to other injuries.
Even though injuries are impossible to be entirely avoided, most of the burns are still predictable and preventable. Parents should communicate and educate their children about information on heat-related injuries so that children will stay away from those dangerous areas or objects.
- Falls
Falling is an unavoidable part of a child development especially when just starting to learn to move such as crawl, climb, walk, run and jump. Falling can be from baby prams, highchairs, baby walker, changing table, infant seats or cribs. In fact faulty playground equipment is another factor causing falls in children. It is essential to ensure that those playground equipment are well-maintained, safe, and without any sharp or hidden edges, so that your child’s safety is guaranteed. Besides that, home equipment such as wires, elevated or lower ground level, sharp edges, stairs and windows should be given extra care to minimize the risk of causing falls of your child. Falling usually causes minor bruise, cuts or scratches only which will not leave any scar after recovery. In more severe case, fractures can happen especially when falls from high to low level such as stairs. Nevertheless, by providing a proper supervision, most of these injuries can be prevented by both parents and the child.
- Sports-related Injuries
Children love to join sports activity especially for boys. It is beneficial for children to join sports activity since young but the only problem is injury can easily happen when doing sports. According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2009, more than 2.6 million children (ages between 0-19) were treated in hospital emergency department due to sports and recreational injuries in whole year.
Sports-related injuries can range from scratches, bruises, fractures to severe injuries like spinal or even brain damage. For a young athletic, sprain (injury to ligament) and strain (injury to muscle or tendon) are the most common injuries. Overusing of muscles and tendons can also lead to stress fractures (fracture of bone) and tendinitis (inflammation of a tendon) which are very painful injuries. Other than that, dehydration, heat stroke and heat exhaustion can also be observed during aggressive sports activity on a sunny day especially for children. Therefore, to minimize the occurrence of sports-related injuries, children should wear proper protective equipment and prevent playing vigorous sports on a hot and sunny day.
- Bites and Stings
Bites and stings are another relatively common injury for children. It can be animal bites, insect bites, insect stings or human bites. Animal bites most likely will cause infection or transmit disease that carry on the animal. Insect bites such as fleas, mites, or spiders bites, cause allergy type of reaction and pain while some can be fatal such as black widow spider bite. On the other hands, most of these insect stings such as bee or wasps, cause only minor discomfort but still painful for children. Infections can also be observed after being stung by insects, however they are relatively less serious. Lastly, human bite is another serious problem as children tend to bite others to defend themselves. In fact, human bites can be infected easily by the microbes in the human mouth. Hence, it is recommended to contact or approach a healthcare practitioner to treat human bite.
- Head injuries
Head injury is another serious issue during childhood nowadays. Children are getting hurt on their heads by many possibilities such as abuse, sibling fights, hit by random falling objects, falling from great height (such as chairs, beds, stairs and etc.), bicycle or car accidents and etc. The severity of the injury depends on the how the children get hurt. Light impact usually only causes bruise, cut or scratch whereas heavy impact head injury have a higher risk of causing brain damage such as shaken baby syndrome. Generally, a brain injury shows several possible symptoms such as large area of swelling and bleeding around the brain, vomiting, loss of consciousness, seizure (relatively rare) or become clumsy, sleepy and confused. When any of these symptoms is observed, it is necessary to approach a doctor for further diagnosis.
Spray 8, a natural, safe and specially designed wound care product able to treat a wide range of injuries including those mentioned above. Therefore, it is the best choice for children as it is also portable and easy to use.
References
- http://www.babycenter.com/0_common-childhood-accidents_403.bc
- http://www.webmd.com/children/tc/physical-abuse-common-injuries-in-children-topic-overview
- https://www.cdc.gov/safechild/pdf/nap_burns_injuries-a.pdf
- https://www.cdc.gov/safechild/burns/index.html
- http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/child/injury/world_report/Burns_english.pdf?ua=1
- http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/child/injury/world_report/Falls_english.pdf?ua=1
- https://www.cdc.gov/safechild/falls/index.html
- https://www.cdc.gov/safechild/pdf/nap_falls_related_injuries-a.pdf
- https://www.cdc.gov/safechild/pdf/nap_sports_rec_injuries-a.pdf
- http://www.niams.nih.gov/health_info/sports_injuries/child_sports_injuries.asp
- https://www.cdc.gov/safechild/sports_injuries/index.html
- http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/category?id=33171
- http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=facts-about-animal-bites-90-P01880&sid=
- http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=snake-bites-and-children-90-P02849&sid=
- http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=children-and-fleas-mites-and-chiggers-90-P01901&sid=
- http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=spider-bites-in-children-90-P02850&sid=
- http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=insect-stings-90-P02854&sid=
- http://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=why-children-bite-90-P02860&sid=
- http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/images/cdc-childhoodinjury.pdf
- http://www.pregnancy.org/article/your-baby-has-a-head-injury-what-should-you-do
- http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetails.aspx?p=114&np=304&id=1475
- http://www.uptodate.com/contents/head-injury-in-children-and-adolescents-beyond-the-basics
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