Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center looked at two groups of families with newborns. One set of families had properly installed and maintained safety devices in their homes, including stairway gates, cabinet locks, electrical outlet covers, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, safe storage for knives and other sharp items, and hot water heaters set below 120 degrees F.
After two years of follow-up, children in the homes with the safety devices had 70 percent fewer home-related injuries that required medical attention than did the children in the other group.A report on the findings was published in the April issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Each year in the United States, about 2,800 children die from preventable injuries in the home, and millions more are treated in hospital emergency rooms, according to the researchers.
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