Categories
10 Things

This one thing causes 15% of all child emergency room visits

Going to the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM is never a good time.

There’s no good food, the chairs are uncomfortable, there are germs everywhere… the hospital is not the place that you want to go to if you don’t already have a reason to be there.

So in the guise of helping parents, researchers at the NATIONWIDE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL IN COLUMBUS, OHIO went through thousands of child emergency room records from 2001 to 2009 to see if there were any trends in PREVENTABLE EMERGENCY ROOM VISITS that could be discovered through the data.

The theory is that if parents were aware of why children were going to the emergency room, maybe they could be more aware of those situations and prevent them from occuring in the first place.

 

Safety 1st Small Object Choking Tester
Safety 1st Small Object Choking Tester

Hard Candy
Hard Candy

And that’s why they focused on THE MOST COMMON CHOKING HAZARDS IN KIDS to see if there were specific causes of choking that parents should act upon.

What they found is that 15% OF ALL FOOD-BASED CHOKING-RELATED EMERGENCY ROOM VISITS BY CHILDREN were due to choking on hard candy.

That ever-popular child-friendly food, the FRENCH FRY, accounted for just 0.8% of those choking visits, by contrast.

The TOP FIVE FOOD CHOKING HAZARDS that all parents should keep an eye out for were:

  • Hard Candy
  • All other candy
  • Any meat… that’s not a hot dog
  • Bones
  • Fruits and Vegetables