Orthopedic surgeon blames heat for summer rise in broken bones

Marks the unofficial start to summer and that means more kids are out there just having a good old time, but that also means more kids are heading to the emergency room. According to the nonprofits Safe Kids Worldwide, 50 children go to the emergency room every hour. Many of them with broken bones or head injuries. 10 news reporter Shannon Viotaleed spoke with a local orthopedic surgeon who blames this problem on the hot temperatures.

We all know it’s really hot outside, but here’s something to think about. If you don’t keep your kids hydrated and say they’re climbing on these monkey bars, they can get really weak fall and break a bone. Dr. Yi is a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon. During the summer he sees more kids breaking bones and getting injured. One of the reasons the hot temperatures, the muscles are fatiguing a little bit quicker, putting them at a higher risk of developing some kind of an injury or some kind of a fall that otherwise they might have not had had they been in their top condition.

How many kids have you seen that have heat exhaustion and then you see them breaking some kind of bone in their body. Almost all of them have some degree of, um, whether it’s a heat exhaustion or heat exposure where you know, you can tell by just, you know, their skin of their color, whether it’s kinda just flushed and they’re very warm and they’re tired and the fatigue and they’re dehydrated. And by the way, they have, you know, they sustain this, you know, breaking their arm or in their leg. Sometimes these scorching temperatures can surprise us. So many parents may not be prepared and it hasn’t fully kicked in in the end yet that Hey, we’re reaching these temperatures of a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and it’s getting much hotter where the kids really need to be adequately hydrated.

Craig Johnson says he always keeps his three-year-old son hydrated at the park. It would just have to supervise him, but weather isn’t the only concern this summer. But nowadays with the upcoming hoverboards and you know, more and more people using different types of, um, skateboards and things like that, they’re getting injuries from those.

Yes. The hoverboards, Dr. Yi says some kids don’t even bother with the helmets. So the end up with a broken wrist or leg,
I think it’s a very important, at a young age, you have a developing brain. You want to protect that as much as possible. And so you want to make sure you’re wearing helmets for any wheeled sports because it’s not a matter of if kids are going to fall. It’s when, so remember protection and hydration. Shannon Viotaleed, 10 News.