Quote:
Originally posted by GarthB
Neck Injuries: Urgent Decisions and Actions
John Wiesenfarth, MD, MS; William Briner, Jr, MD
Emergencies Series
Editor: Warren B. Howe, MD
THE PHYSICIAN AND SPORTSMEDICINE - VOL 24 - NO. 1 - JANUARY 96
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"Of the 6,000 to 10,000 spinal cord injuries reported each year, motor vehicle accidents account for 35% to 45%, and falls for 25% to 30% (1). Most of the rest are related to sports, especially football, rugby, ice hockey, soccer, diving, gymnastics, and wrestling (2-4). Nevertheless, catastrophic neck injuries are infrequent in sports, with a prevalence of less than 2/100,000 neck injuries (3). One sport has especially reduced the incidence: Fewer than 10 football players each year have sustained permanent injury to the cervical spinal cord since 1977 (5)."
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No mention of baseball in the listing of sports in which spinal injuries occur annually.
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There's a good reason for that. The study you quote above was not exclusively for ages 5-14 playing baseball and softball. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued their warning about head first slides for
only children around 10 years old. It is not surprising that such a report does not include such rigid case studies.
What I think is even more interesting is that the quote Garth provided seems to give credit to football for reducing the incidence of "spearing". This is the same potential cervical spinal injury that Little League is trying to prevent by prohibiting head-first slides.
It is not the frequency of spinal injuries in children around 10-years-old that facilitated the rule prohibiting head-first sliding. Admittedly, the number of incidents are low. But the severity of the injury is alarming enough that any youth league with children 10 and under should take a very serious look at head-first slides.
Do we have to have documented reports of dozens of children in wheelchairs before even considering the prohibition of this slide? My God I certainly hope not. The idea is to keep the kids out of the wheelchairs, and on the baseball field.