Mineola, NY – Surprising Risk for Toddlers on Playground Slides

Mineola, NY – Orthopedic specialists say they treat a number of toddlers and young children each year with broken legs as a result of riding down the slide on a parent’s lap. A study at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., found that nearly 14 percent of pediatric leg fractures over an 11-month period involved toddlers riding down the slide with a parent.

This may be one of those counterintuitive cases when a child is safer by himself. If a foot gets caught while the child is sliding alone, he can just stop moving or twist around until it comes free. But when a child is sitting in an adult lap, the force of the adult’s weight behind him ends up breaking his leg.

The injury is typically treated with a cast from the foot to above the knee; the good news is that no surgery or resetting is needed. The child wears the cast for four to six weeks and heals without any lasting complications.

But the damage is not merely physical. “The parents are always crushed that they broke their kid’s leg and are baffled as to why nobody ever told them this could happen,” Dr. Holt said. “Sometimes one parent is angry at the other parent because that parent caused the child’s fracture. It has some real consequences to families, and I hate to see it happen.”

The Mineola study was done by Dr. John Gaffney, a pediatric orthopedic specialist at Winthrop, after he had treated a rash of playground slide fractures. The hospital’s data indicated that every sliding fracture involved a child younger than 3 riding in an adult’s lap. The fracture might not be immediately obvious, but typically the child appeared to be in pain and could not put weight on the leg.