50,000 Children Crush their Fingers in Doors each year according to BAPRAS
The British Association of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (BAPRAS) released a report this week urging parents and carers to routinely use door stoppers and hinge guards to cut the estimated 50,000 children whose hands and fingers are crushed by doors each year.
The report by BAPRAS revealed that fingertip injuries are the most common hand injury seen by plastic and reconstructive surgeons with 1 in 6 injuries resulting in amputation.
Many people seem to underestimate the severity of finger-trapping injuries as Anna De Leo, a surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, London and spokesperson for BAPRAS pointed out:
“People joke that it is just a finger injury – but the reality for people who sustain those injuries is significant – as more likely than not, they will live with an impairment for the rest of their lives.
“It’s easy to underestimate how important your hands are doing everyday tasks. Injuries to fingers and hands mean tying your shoelaces, typing, holding a mobile phone or eating become a lot more challenging. And this is nothing compared to the impact of a finger amputation.
“Fingertip injury alone can result in 20% loss of hand strength and prevent people from pursuing their chosen career”.
Figures collected in just one London hospital reveal that last year door crushing accidents resulted in 630 nailbed injury operations.
BAPRAS surgeons highlighted the top 3 risk factors for finger-trapping accidents are:
- Self-shutting fire safety doors.
- Car doors.
- Hinges.
Anna De Leo appeared on BBC Radio 2 for an interview with Jeremy Vine yesterday to discuss these findings. Here are some snippets from the interview:
Jeremy Vine: So, you see one [finger-trapping incident] a day do you?
Anna De Leo: Uh probably more, in one year we saw more than a thousand patients.
Jeremy Vine: So, when you see these poor children, they’ve got a crushed injury from normally a door. They’ve got a crushed nailbed; do you ever have to cut the end of the finger off?
Anna De Leo: Yeah, it’s happened often because when the finger is crushed we need to reconstruct. Often the tip of the finger is dying.
Jeremy Vine (talking about when he trapped his finger in the door): A young child slammed the door and my finger was in the frame and the nail went black and fell off. Then I had a new nail and it was fine.
Anna De Leo: I think you were very lucky. Most of the traumas they get a broken nail, a fracture, they lose a fingertip. We get amputations from these traumas.
Later in the interview, Ms De Leo referenced that the recovery time for a finger or hand injury is about a month and during that time, the whole hand is wrapped in a ‘boxing-glove’ style bandage, losing the use of the whole hand for that period of time.
At Cardea Solutions, we have been experts in door safety since 1999. With our award-winning Fingershield installed on doors in nurseries, schools, leisure centres across the UK, our products have been preventing finger-trapping accidents for over 18 years.
One issue raised by Jeremy Vine was:
Anna De Leo: It costs only £1 – buy the rubber [door stoppers] to stop the door.
Jeremy Vine: But you can’t close the door then can you?
Anna De Leo: You cannot close the door, it’s just a stopper on the door.
Jeremy Vine: But that’s better than a crushed finger.
The Happy Hands Door Stopper is designed for the handle side of the door.
The Happy Hands Door Stopper is a strong plastic design on swivel motion, allowing you to swivel back and forth to close the door when necessary without constantly having to move and remove a c-shaped door stopper.
To find out more about how safeguarding your doors from the experts visit our website or speak to our team of specialists on 0161 869 6550.
Sources: BAPRAS.
