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Despite California state regulations mandating their use, only 11 percent of Los Angeles County children treated for bike-related injuries between 2006 and 2011 were wearing helmets, according to research presented Saturday in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition.
Specifically, the analysis of just one,248 bicycle-related accidents found that children older than 12, low-income and minority children were not as likely to put on the potentially life-saving headgear, study author Dr. Veronica F. Sullins of the University of California, La (UCLA) and the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center said in the Orlando conference.
Dr. Sullins and her colleagues reviewed the records of pediatric patients involved in bike accidents from the La County database from 2006 to 2011. The data reviewed included helmet use, age, gender, insurance status and race/ethnicity before checking to ascertain if there was a link between helmet use and also the requirement for emergency medical assistance, morbidity, mortality and/or length of hospitalization, the AAP said in a statement.
The median chronilogical age of the kids was 13, and 64 percent of these were male, the researchers discovered. As many as 11.3 % of patients wore helmets, including 35.2 percent of white children, seven percent of Asian children, six percent of black children, and 4 percent of Hispanic children.
In relation to insurance policy, 15.2 percent of kids with private insurance wore helmets during the time of injury, when compared with 7.6 percent with public insurance. Children over age 12 were less likely to put on head gear. A total of nine patients died, eight who weren’t wearing head gear, while 5.9 % of those injured required emergency surgery. A total of 34.1 percent from the children returned for their pre-injury capacity.
“Our study highlights the necessity to target minority groups, older children, and people with lower socioeconomic status when implementing bicycle safety programs in La County,” Dr. Sullins said, noting that the study emphasizes the necessity to reinforce bicycle safety, particularly in low-income and minority youngsters.
“Children and adolescents have the highest rate of unintentional injury and therefore should be a higher priority target population for injury-prevention programs,” she added. Regional research, exactly like it, can help identify at-risk populations in specific communities, allowing regions to use their safety-related resources more effectively.
According towards the US Cdc and Prevention (CDC), nearly 1,000 people die from injuries related to bicycle crashes every year, and the other 550,000 men and women receive emergency take care of these types of injuries annually. Furthermore, head injuries account for approximately 62 percent of bicycle-related deaths, 33-percent of bicycle-related emergency department visits, and 67-percent of bicycle-related hospital admissions.
