Injury related to the use of baby slings

June 2010

 

Of these 21 cases, 9 (43%) occurred in the last 3 years (October 2006-September 2009), with 5 of these occurring in the most recent 12 month period (October 2008-September 2009).

• Twelve of the injured children were female (57%).
• Two-thirds of the children were aged less than 3 months (n=14).
• Two-thirds of injuries were to the head or face (n=14).
• The most common specific types of injuries were superficial (29%), intracranial injuries (14%) and fractures (14%).
• Almost 30% of these injuries occurred in residential homes (n=6).
• Two-thirds of injuries were the result of the child slipping or falling out of the sling (n=14), 3 of these falls occurred when putting the child in or taking the child out of the sling. 5 injuries were caused when the person carrying the child tripped or fell (24%) and the cause of the remaining 2 injuries was not clear.

Sample narratives describing the circumstances of injury:

• being carried in a baby sling by mum when mum tripped and fell, baby bumped their head
• putting infant into a sling and dropped him head first onto carpeted floor - head injury
• mother taking baby out of sling and dropped them onto cement floor
• baby slipped out of sling at supermarket and hit head on hard floor
• head injury, baby slipped out of baby sling hitting head on counter

Data source: Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD) October1999 to September 2009 (10 years)
Search Strategy: Cases were selected by searching text narratives using the term 'sling'. Selected cases were then manually checked for relevance and unrelated cases excluded.