- As the Mayo Clinic once said,
when it's kids verse trampolines, kids often lose.
It's time to diagnose some trampoline injuries
and give you some stern warnings about trampoline safety
at home and at trampoline parks.
Let's get started. Pee whoop!
- [Speaker] On most weekends,
trampoline parks are packed with hundreds of kids bouncing,
jumping into pits and playing tag.
- I don't know how more injuries don't happen
with so many children at the same time.
Trampolines, dangerous on their own.
Then they said,
"Let's create a room for 1,000 children
to simultaneously knock skulls into one another."
- [Speaker] A father unknowingly causes
what's known as a double bounce.
- The force of the trampoline
coming back up from the father's hop across
broke the four-year-old's femur.
- Oh my God! That is the most painful injury ever!
The femur is one of the strongest bones in the body.
For its to snap like that, it's just absolutely incredible.
- [Speaker] Danger lies in the design.
Several trampolines are connected with steel cables
or chain links under thin padding.
- I don't understand how we can't create a safer tra-
We really need to put metal springs as the solution for it.
We can't create something more bouncy
like a bouncy castle style thing?
- [Speaker] As people jump,
waves of energy are generated in all directions,
which can cause those double bounces
that can end in high-impact collisions.
- I've seen research articles
that look at like an eight, nine-year period.
And they see near million injuries across the United States
from trampoline parks, or trampolines in general.
The fact that we have so many injuries,
I'm surprised their popularity is just skyrocketing.
- [Speaker] Nick says Rick was jumping on the trampoline
when he came down wrong in his foot, stumbled,
and hit his head against a thinly padded wall.
- Oh my God. - The C2 vertebra cracked,
constricted his airway and his blood flow.
Paralyzed him. He was over 90% brain dead.
- Whenever the spinal cord gets severed,
anything below that level gets impacted.
So if it happens that high up,
you're thinking of every vital organ below C2,
which is pretty high up in the neck.
That's gonna make it difficult,
if not impossible to continue sustaining life.
- [Speaker] In the last few years,
emergency room visits caused by trampoline park injuries
has skyrocketed.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission,
the numbers have shot up from 2,500 in 2013,
to almost 18,000 in 2017.
- But remember, these are trampoline parks.
People have trampolines at home, that a lot of times,
don't have any safety protocols like we,
from the CDC perspective, encourage people,
if you're gonna have one,
make sure it's happening under adult supervision.
Make sure there're nets involved.
But there's even been surgeons that have been interviewed
that talk about children flying over the nets
and kids that are just watching
as bystanders getting hurt in this scenario.
They're warning folks because this is happening a lot.
- [Cameraman] That's my boy is going for the world's first
standing triple x quad move.
- One.
- Whenever there are multiple people on the trampoline,
I get nervous.
Especially if there's a size mismatch,
'cause that makes more troublesome.
They do have a spotter, which is positive.
(upbeat music)
- [Cameraman] Yo!
- Oh no, that's a broken tib fib.
- [Cameraman] Oh!
- That's a very painful injury.
For us as medical professionals,
what we do on site is actually very limited.
If we see neurovascular compromise,
meaning that the lower leg is not getting circulation
or some kind of loss of sensation,
we may try and do a reduction in the field.
But usually we reserve that for the operating room
and the orthopedic surgeons,
when they have a protected environment,
and you're not doing this outside,
you have the proper tools at your disposal.
- [Speaker 1] At first glance,
it could be a scene from a backyard barbecue.
But look a little closer.
That's 11-year-old Gavin Reynolds,
and his friend Rhode Hill, jumping on a trampoline,
when suddenly, a strong gust of wind sends the trampoline.
- Oh my God!
See, like these are the trampoline injuries
that you can't really predict.
Or the times the children don't even use the trampoline.
Like they go underneath it,
and then someone jumps on it and they get hurt.
- [Speaker 1] Home surveillance video
capturing Gavin hobbling to the front door.
- What do you tell your parents?
"Mom, the trampoline blew across the road?"
- [Speaker 1] Ambulance is rushing the boys
to the hospital.
Rhode suffering a fractured pelvis and elbow,
Gavin dealing with back pain and bruises from the fall.
- And clearly, both boys are recovering this morning,
but we saw right there, they are doing well.
- Yeah, it's great that they're doing well.
It's very easy to have a head injury
in a situation like that.
Remember when anyone is brought to the hospital,
part of what we do in deciding what scans to get
is based on the mechanism of injury.
And a child sent 50 feet flying
because of a gust of wind on a trampoline,
landing on a hard surface like cement,
is getting pan-scanned with a head CT, a abdomen CT,
a pelvic CT, all of it.
- We're at a trampoline park! Do it!
(upbeat music)
- [Off-Screen Voice] Just go for it, bro.
- Oh!
- [Cameraman 1] Harry, Harry, you've been in bed all day?
Do you wanna tell 'em why?
- Okay, so do you remember when this happened,
when I went trampolining?
(upbeat music)
- Oh, did he break his arm?
- So it turns out I actually bruised that rib there
and so I'm bed-bound for the next foreseeable future.
- A lot of times,
it's very difficult to distinguish whether or not
a rib has been broken or just bruised.
There's also a sensitive tissue in that area
that can get easily inflamed.
And when you take a deep breaths, it can be quite painful.
Even X-rays aren't perfect at this.
Like there there are rib series we can get
that are dedicated X-rays for the ribs.
Those expose you to more radiation
than the typical flat plate.
But then the gold standard
to finding those smaller fractures is really an MRI.
But again, in most cases,
we're not gonna be doing much unless it's displaced,
or perhaps the lung is injured, causing a pneumothorax.
Oh no, why?
- [Cameraman 2] Oh, he didn't make it. Wait, help us.
- Is he okay? I couldn't even tell what happened.
- [Off-Screen Voice 1] Cool, I got..
- [Cameraman 2] We got some special attention right here.
- The fact that he is checking the patella
is not very valuable.
- When you dislocate the kneecap,
it slides over and see, straighten your knee, it pops back.
That's what happened.
- So I did dislocate it there?
- I don't know,
there looks like there's a little laxity there,
pulling forward on the anterior draw.
- His ligaments are good.
His ligaments are good.
- I was about to say,
"I don't think his ligaments are good."
And the way that you do it is you actually compare it
to the other knee
because you don't know what laxity is like.
You need to feel the endpoint on the healthy knee
and then check it on the not-so-healthy knee.
- So I get to the second doctor,
he does some tests on my knee.
He basically confirmed that my ACL was torn in my right leg
and that I'm gonna need surgery.
- The ACL provides support for your knee
to avoid it from sliding forward.
And that's really important
because that gives your knee stability.
If you have a damaged ACL,
that can predispose you to having higher rates
and earlier diagnosis of osteoarthritis later in life.
- [Speaker 2] The only giveaway is Diondre Hurn
walks his two daughters to track practice
is the slight hitch in his step.
- The feeling of not being able to feel
is mentally scary and scarring.
- It's not just scary and scarring.
It's both of those things.
But it's also dangerous in the sense
where you may not be able to pick up injuries.
This is why so often, part of my exams,
when I have a patient who's diabetic
and doesn't have good sensation in their feet,
I have to check it for cuts, for areas of infection,
because someone who has diabetes
and has peripheral neuropathy,
which is dysfunction of the nerves
in the distal extremities, the feet and the hands,
they can actually have damage to those areas,
be walking on a rock and not even realize it
because they don't have the sensation.
But this can also be trauma-induced as well.
- I jumped in on my second attempt.
And that's when I got injured.
Next thing I know is I heard a pop,
and immediately I felt a hot sensation
and no more feeling from my chest down.
- This reminds me of a very similar situation
that you guys sent across my social media
when during TwitchCon,
one of the streamers actually jumped in
and ended up breaking her spine in multiple places
because I felt like there weren't enough foam squares
inside the foam pit.
You're allowing people to get hurt in your establishment.
Isn't that the last thing you want?
This is an area where we know people
are gonna be moving fast, jumping high.
So you know you gotta brace for impact.
You know you gotta make sure your safety standards
are important.
- [Speaker 2] After surgery, Diondre remained paralyzed.
Doctors told him he might never walk again.
- It's very important that we talk about the prognosis
we give patients after a spinal injury.
Because it's not always right.
We don't know what the outcome will be
with 100% certainty in most cases.
Sometimes there can be a spinal contusion
that could be causing symptoms like paralysis,
numbness, tingling,
and we don't know exactly how long those symptoms will last
until a few days go by
and we start seeing the rehab process kick in.
That's why it's important we counsel patients
that we don't know yet what's gonna happen,
comfort them during a moment of unknowing.
But making promises
or even statements like "you'll never walk again,"
is not really helpful,
because it's not coming from a place of good judgment.
- Just slowly progressed from standing
to taking a few steps, learning how to walk again.
From there, learning to go with the walker.
- I would have to watch him through the pain,
through the suffering, through the depression.
- We take for granted in many instances
that we are able to walk,
that we do have our own independence.
But when those things are taken from us
because we need to ambulate with assistance,
we start realizing how important those things were.
And it really highlights that common phrase that we say,
"You don't miss something until it's gone."
A lot of times we start taking for granted,
those very small things in life,
that then when we are able to win them back,
they mean the world to us.
Oh my God, see?
This is where the spinal injuries happen
during these types of spins.
When you get hyperextension of the thoracic spine.
Remember, the spine has special curves in it
that help you distribute weight while you're standing up.
So for example, in the cervical area, you have lordosis,
where the spine is curved in.
Then on the thoracic spine, it's kyphosis,
the opposite where it's curved out.
And then lumbar again, you have the lordosis.
So here on the area of his spine, the middle of his spine,
the thoracic area, he's having hyperextension of kyphosis,
where it's naturally supposed to be curved the other way.
So you're getting tremendous amount of pressure
on not just the spinal cord,
but the nerves that come off of it as well.
Oh my God! And they tear too?
You gotta figure that most people
are keeping their trampolines outside.
So they're not like well maintained.
So that they're not gonna hold up well,
they're gonna snap, they're gonna hurt somebody.
You gotta be really careful around these things.
Incredible situations.
But these are incredible world records with human bodies.
Check it out. It really made me go, "Whoa."
As always, stay happy and healthy.
(upbeat music)