Protecting tiny fingers

The doors in your home may pose an unexpected safety hazard, especially to young children. According to a new study, children younger than 4 are the group of people most likely to lose a finger or fingertip in a nonwork accident. The most common sources of those accidents are doors.

“These injuries are very painful for both kids and parents,” says Raymond Hart, an emergency room doctor who studies injury prevention at the Christine M. Kleinert Institute for Hand and Microsurgery in Louisville, Ky. “But they can be prevented.”

Researchers at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control in Atlanta found two high-risk groups for finger amputations: children younger than 4, whose accidents are predominantly caused by doors, and men age 45 to 65, whose accidents are most often caused by power tools.

The study, published online March 8 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, used data collected from 66 hospitals around the nation in 2001 and 2002. During that period, 19 of every 100,000 kids younger than 4 lost part of a finger in accidents each year. That’s almost twice the rate of accidents resulting in finger loss in older men. Of the accidents involving doors, 85% were caused by doors within the house or other buildings. The remainder were doors in cars or other vehicles.

Many of the injuries occur when an older child accidentally slams a door on his or her younger sibling, Hart says. Parents can prevent injuries by keeping internal doors consistently open or closed to minimize slamming and by discouraging children from playing near doors, he says.