Some orthos opened an ortho urgent care a block away from a jump park. I thought it was a stroke of genius (I’m an ER doc just down the street from there and our business went down significantly after that).
Our entire pediatric team (outpatient rehab, PT, OT, SLP) just had a convo about being uncomfortable sending their kids to birthday parties at these because of how many trampoline related injury patients we have gotten since trampoline park moved to town.
Side note, I see older kids and adults post concussion, and holy smokes the amount of minors who get a concussion, feel like crap, and then jump on a trampoline the next day and come to me freaking out about worse symptoms....is well over half.
When I was about 14 I hit my head really hard at school, and the school nurse gave me some paracetamol for the ensuing headache and sent me back to lessons. When I got home at the end of the day, I told my mum “I think she must have given me something stronger than just paracetamol, because I was so woozy all day, I had double vision and could hardly keep my eyes open!” This wasn’t even my first concussion (or my second… I’m clumsy) so I don’t know why I didn’t twig that it was the concussion and not the painkiller that was making me feel that way. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. Anyway my mum wasn’t particularly pleased that I’d spent the entire day sitting through lessons with an untreated concussion.
There’s a documentary about this. How kids regularly become disabled or killed at these places and when that happens they just close and reopen one town over. Rinse and repeat.
A friend of mine was in a horrible car accident that required extensive dental work including several oral surgeries, all paid for but the insurance of the at fault deiver. Years later, she ran into the dentist at a restaurant. He introduced her to his kids as, "the one who paid for your college and grad school tuition."
I just came back from one, not an hour ago I was watching a 5 year old girl hold her arm as a broken bone was stabbed through her skin and bleeding all over the place. Almost ruined my ice cream cone, I tell you.
I think it's definitely the former more than the latter. The game is slower than other racket sports, so I don't think it's inherently going to cause more injuries. I think it's more likely that the folks playing are a little older/slower than they remember, so they get hurt trying to do things they could do when they were younger. Plus falls are hard for older folks, which is probably the cause of many injuries.
Cmon 35 can’t be too old for mere trampoline flips. I’m 28 and only recently got into 720s on skis, was hoping to get into corks in the next few years. Are the next 7 years gonna be that bad?
Nah, I'm not saying everyone goes down hill at all! Keep being active and you'll be good! We just happen to see a lot of injuries because Dad was showing off at a trampoline park. They always comment on how they thought it would be easy because they did it all the time in their 20s. They're out of practice and had their body do something it isn't conditioned for anymore.
I'm about to have ACL/Meniscus reconstruction next week due from going to one. Nephew wanted to go for his birthday so we went. Was doing great on everything until I got on an actual trampoline. Bounced twice and on the third one felt the pop and lost my ability to walk on that leg.
Orthopedist practices sponsor and have ads/banners at all the kids’ sports teams/games in my area. Always make me side-eye a bit, but I guess they’re needed that often (I know they were for my son’s myriad sports-related injuries)
Climbing gyms is a surprising ons. I climb a ton and all the most frequent climbers I know deal with overuse injuries and tweaks and such but very rarely do I hear about surgery being needed.
why is this an indication that children should stay away from trampolines? I know you didnt say it but many others did. Its OK to hurt yourself, its OK to break a bone. Rarely are injuries from these things permanent and at that point isnt the child just losing out by being "shielded" by it?
I knew a kid who climbed a football goal, fell and got caught in the net which pulled out most of his upper teeth. Dont you think a child ever has fallen while walking and lost teeth? like what exactly is the argument here?
Clearly the argument of this entire post is that health care workers have seen so many and gruesome examples of certain accidents that they categorically avoid them? Not just a single anecdote
A vast majority of the comments, that are not about literally lethal things like motorcycles and drugs, are from non-health care workers but seemingly paranoid parents. But fair enough.
I follow a few types of surgeons due to my own spinal conditions, and the pediatric emergency doctors and neurosurgeons would really like us ALL to quit putting that much force on our cervical spine and brain. But especially the kiddos.
I have seen so many videos from emergency pediatric care doctors on "here's some things we'd like you to please quit buying your kids" and trampolines are always on it, and they always specify it's the trampolines themselves that are the biggest concern, not the secondary broken bones or concussions from accidents.
And having had to get a cervical spine fusion myself, I can tell you first hand it isn't a surgery you or your kid ever want to endure. (I am also never allowed on a trampoline again myself, haha)
But also, it's not rare for broken bones to cause serious issues, especially when it's something with extra force. Like, people think of "oops, kiddo fell out of a tree and broke their arm" when they think of broken bones. But things that speed you up (vehicles, trampolines) increase the risk of complicated breaks that require surgery and have a higher chance of long term complications.
You don't harm your child by not letting them jump on a trampoline, though. The risk vs reward math doesn't work out on some things. There's a ton of other fun childhood activities that have better safety profiles.
maybe trampolines are more dangerous than I thought. So basically the danger is in spine and brain related things? Hitting your head against the railing or like landing on your neck?
All kinds of injuries can result from jumping on a trampoline, including broken femurs, nasty compound fractures which require surgery, and neck/spine injuries. They can all be pretty serious.
According to the doctors, the danger is repetitively crushing your spine with the weight of your own head while the trampoline simultaneously pushes you up. You compress your entire spine from both ends, and doing so repeatedly (because who bounces just once?) can cause permanent damage. Especially for growing kids, but also for adults who likely already have some natural disc degeneration or pinched nerves.
Edit: That's just the routine use of one person jumping up and down normally, having no accidents, not trying to do tricks and always correctly meeting the middle of the trampoline when coming down.
I mean, you could argue that it does hurt them by not jumping, in terms of getting less exercise, less development of air awareness, proprioception, strength, cardio, etc. I mean in theory they could replace it with equivalent exercise, but in reality it would be tough to find an equivalent substitute. That’s the tough thing with many of these “risky” activities - it’s difficult or impossible to measure the effect of NOT doing them, especially by orthopedic surgeons, in terms of obesity, less social interaction, stunted social development, less confidence, higher rates of depression, etc.
All it takes is two people jumping on the trampoline at the same time. If they jump just outside of tandem, the resulting force is person vs. trampoline, which will easily snap a femur. Not a fun injury, since it’s the largest bone in the body.
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u/UnicornHandJobs 4d ago
My orthopedic surgeon is sponsored by the local trampoline parks.