Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics / 20.05.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeffrey Colvin, MD, JD Department of Pediatrics Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas City, MO 64111  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Prior studies have found that infants spend an average of 5-6 hours a day in sitting devices. Sitting devices include car seats, swings, infant seats, and strollers. Given how much time infants are spending in sitting devices, we wanted to know if sleep-related infant deaths (such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or "SIDS") was occurring in those devices. We examined over 10,000 infant sleep-related deaths from 45 states. We found that 3% (or 348) of the deaths occurred in sitting devices. Two-thirds of the deaths in sitting devices were in car seats. What was most surprising was that less than 10% of the deaths in car seats occurred in cars. Instead, the great majority occurred in the child's home or the home of a relative, friend, or babysitter. In 1/3 of the deaths in car seats, the supervising adult was asleep.  (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics / 03.04.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Julie Mansfield, Lead author Research engineer Injury Biomechanics Research Center Ohio State College of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Parents and caregivers often understand that a rear-facing car seat will support the head, neck, and spine during frontal impacts. In frontal impacts, the child will simply be cradled and supported by the shell of the car seat as crash forces “pull” the child toward the front of the vehicle. However, caregivers often ask how a rear-facing car seat would work if the vehicle is struck from behind. In that case, crash forces might “pull” the occupant toward the rear of the vehicle. In this case, they wonder whether the head and neck of the rear-facing child would be supported. Injuries to children in rear impact crashes are fairly rare. However, we wanted to run some crash tests so we could see exactly what was happening in these scenarios. With these data, we can better explain to caregivers how rear-facing car seats work in this type of crash. We exposed four different models of rear-facing car seats to a moderate severity rear-impact crash pulse. All were installed on a recent model year vehicle seat. We used crash test dummies representing a one-year-old child and a three-year-old child. We found that the rear-facing car seats protected the crash test dummy well when exposed to a typical rear impact. The car seats supported the child throughout the crash and still did their job to keep the head, neck, and spine aligned. A lot of the crash energy was absorbed through the car seat interacting with the vehicle seat, so that reduced the amount of energy transferred into the occupant. This is important in preventing injuries. (more…)