More than 5,000 children a year are treated in hospital emergency rooms after falling out of windows, a new study shows.
The research, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that most of the accidents involved falls from first-floor or second-floor windows of homes, rather than from high-rise apartment buildings. The falls tend to occur in the summer, when windows often are left open.
“The best parent in the world can’t watch their children 100 percent of the time. Children want to check things out, and they don’t know that an open window is a danger that has very severe consequences,” said study co-author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Children below age 5 accounted for two-thirds of all cases, as Reuters reports. Nearly half of the children hurt, who tended to be boys, suffered injuries to their heads or faces. About two in 1,000 cases were fatal.
Researchers say children sometimes reach windows by standing on furniture, and that screens are unlikely to help prevent falls. However, public information campaigns in New York City and Boston have demonstrated that many of these accidents can be avoided.
Window guards, which stop kids from getting out of windows, and window stops, which keep windows from being opened more than four inches, can help prevent these accidents, as MyHealthNewsDaily reports. New York City’s health code, for instance, requires apartment buildings to install guards on all windows in households with children under age 10.
Overall, injuries rates declined slightly, about 4 percent, over the course of the 1990-2008 study period, almost entirely in the under-5 age group.
The study’s researchers, who were from Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Ohio State University, based their findings on emergency room data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, an injury database compiled from 100 hospitals.
The researchers estimated that emergency rooms across the United States treated an estimated 98,415 children for injuries related to falls from windows during the 19-year study period, or close to 5,200 children a year. About a quarter of patients who were taken to emergency rooms were admitted to hospitals for further care.
LILLY FOWLER
