Baby-bouncer-related injuries: an under-appreciated risk.

New baby-related products are being constantly intro-duced on the market aiming to meet the real or perceivedneeds of parents who raise their children in contempo-rary societies. Baby-bouncers are among the most pop-ular baby products. Their use, however, may impart aninjury risk of variable nature and severity.Baby-bouncers have become a common gift to thenewborn by relatives and family friends, who considerthat the product will provide a pleasant experience forthe baby. Awareness about possible hazards due to fallsfrom baby-bouncers has been raised following reportsfrom the United States and the United Kingdom [1,4].This problem, however, has not been adequately studiedin other parts of the world, especially southern Euro-pean countries, where adherence to the recommenda-tions for use of the product may be sub-optimal andinfant-raising patterns may be diﬀerent.In order to assess the magnitude and risk factors forbaby-bouncer related injuries, we conducted a studyusing 5-year injury data (1996–2000) recorded by theEmergency Department Injury Surveillance Database(EDISS) in Greece. Specially trained health visitorsinterviewed the childs guardian using a pre-codedquestionnaire that included information regarding so-cio-demographic variables, event coordinates, injurycharacteristics, the product involved, as well as a shortfree text describing the incident. For estimating the userate of the product, we also conducted for a 3-monthperiod, a special survey concerning the prevalence of useof baby-bouncers (past or present) among 777 parents ofyoung children.The analysis was done through simple cross-classiﬁ-cation of the data and a special search of the free textdescription of injury events. By taking into accountsampling ratios in the EDISS database for infants andchildren [2], a nationwide extrapolation has been per-formed in order to assess the number of baby-bouncer-related injuries among infants in Greece.Out of a total of 4,353 injured infants who werebrought to the Emergency Departments covered byEDISS during the studied period, 181 (4.2%) soughtcare for injuries related to baby-bouncers. This ﬁgurecan be extrapolated to an annual number of 234 baby-bouncer-related injuries in Greece, corresponding to anannual incidence of 2.3 cases per 1,000 infants per yearor 3.9 per 1000 user-years. If other population groups inthe European Union similarly use baby-bouncers, aplausible although not documented assumption, it canbe estimated that more than 8,000 infant injuries peryear in all Member States are baby-bouncer-related.Table 1 shows the distribution of 181 infants withbaby-bouncer-related injuries by demographic, eventand injury related characteristics. The majority of chil-dren who sustained injuries due to baby-bouncers wereless than 7 months old (78%) and of male gender (58%).Most baby-bouncer injuries occurred inside the houseduring day hours, especially in the kitchen and livingroom (58%) with fall from a height (carried or surface)being the prevailing mechanism of injury (over 70%).Falls while carried were frequently due to slipping ofbaby-bouncer handles or lack of use of infant restraints.About 50% of the infants, however, fell while they wereresting in a baby-bouncer that had been placed on apiece of furniture (usually a table) or even the ﬂat sur-face of a household device, such as the laundry. Injurieswere often severe (11% concussions and 12% fractures),requiring hospitalisation (14%), which was extended formore than 2 days in approximately 66% of cases.Overall, an X-ray (plain ﬁlm of the head) was performedin 84% of cases.