Holiday lights and decorations are welcome distractions from the cold weather outside, but also bring an increased potential for injury, especially to young children.

Holiday home safety mishaps account for more than 12,000 emergency room visits each year in the United States during November and December, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

The dangers that lurk behind holiday cheer are often associated with electrical safety, tree-decorating mistakes, unintentional poisoning and cooking injuries.

The holiday season primarily brings an increased risk for fire and burn injuries, since many households use candles or electrical lights to decorate. There is also an increased risk for home fires caused by cooking. It is important to follow safety recommendations and make sure all young children are under active adult supervision.

Keep these safety tips in mind as you celebrate the holidays:

Electrical Safety
• Inspect holiday lights each year – check for frayed wires, broken sockets or excessive wear.
• Look for the “ETL” or “UL” label on lights to make sure they have been tested for safety.
• Unplug all holiday lights when you go to sleep or leave your house.
• Don’t overload extension cords or outlets with too many plugs.

Safe Decorating
• Make sure an adult is present when candles are lit and blow out the candles before leaving a room.
• Keep candles at least three feet away from anything that might burn.
• Store candles, matches and lighters out of sight and reach of children.
• Artificial trees should have a “fire resistant” label.
• Live trees should be watered frequently, keeping the stand filled with water at all times.
• All trees should be at least three feet away from any heat source, including candles.
• Avoid putting ornaments that have small parts or metal hooks, or look like food or candy, on lower branches easily accessible to young children.

Poison Prevention
• Keep alcohol, including baking extracts, out of reach of children.
• Color additives used in fireplace fires are a toxic product and should be stored out of reach.
• Artificial snow can be harmful if inhaled, so use it in a well-vented space.
• Mistletoe berries, Holly Berry and Jerusalem Cherry can be poisonous. If they are used in decorating, make sure children and pets cannot reach them.

For more information about holiday safety and other home safety tips contact the Safety Outreach Program by calling (615) 936-SAFE (7233) or visiting www.childrenshospital.vanderbilt.org/safety. In a poison emergency, call the Tennessee Poison Control Center at (800) 222-1222.

Reports of child concussions have doubled in the last decade, partly because more children than ever are playing organized sports.

Undoubtedly though, much of the spike is from people recognizing the seriousness of these injuries.

Due to the ongoing development of their brains, children are often more vulnerable to sustain a concussion and suffer severe symptoms like headaches, loss of memory or balance, and difficulty with concentration or speech.

The good news?  With the proper treatment and recovery time, they are also more likely to bounce back.

Alex Diamond, D.O., assistant professor of Pediatrics, Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation and medical director of Vanderbilt’s Program for Injury Prevention in Youth Sports, treated 142 young athletes last year in the Vanderbilt Sports Concussion Center.

He compares the brain to a muscle.  If you tear a muscle in your arm and you keep trying to lift heavy things, not only is it going to hurt, but it’s going to take longer to heal, he says.

Rest is a key part in treating concussions, which means taking a break from smart phones, television or music after a brain injury. Most importantly though, children should refrain from athletic activities until they are fully recovered.

Some other tips to prevent, recognize and properly treat child concussions include:

• Familiarizing yourself with the signs and symptoms of a concussion, which include headaches, confusion, dizziness, blurred vision and sensitivity to light or noise, among others.
• If a head injury occurs, remove the athlete from play immediately and seek medical attention. Note: A loss of consciousness doesn’t have to occur with a concussion.
• Make sure children use the right protective equipment for each sport, such as pads, helmets, face guards and eyewear, and they follow all safety rules of the sport in both practices and games.

Vanderbilt has launched a number of efforts to help prevent and treat concussions and other sports-related injuries, including Vanderbilt’s CoachSmart App, sports safety clinics and pre-concussion baseline tests for young athletes.

Visit Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital and Vanderbilt’s website for detailed information on concussion safety.

With the proliferation of smart phones, portable gaming systems and media players, more children—especially teenagers—are listening to ear buds and headphones at dangerously high volume levels. Vanderbilt is offering tips to parents and teenagers to help prevent long-term hearing loss.

Hearing loss now affects 20 percent of U. S. adolescents between ages 12 and 19, a 5 percent increase over the previous 15 years, according to a study led by Vanderbilt’s Dr. Roland Eavey and published in Journal of the American Medical Association.

A separate study by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association found that teenagers typically listen to devices at a louder volume than adults, and that these same teenagers already have symptoms of hearing loss.

Listening to devices with levels over 80 decibels for extended periods of time may be potentially dangerous because prolonged exposure to high volume exhausts the auditory system. Over time, the hair cells in the ear start to degenerate because they aren’t receiving proper blood flow and oxygen.

Here are 5 tips to prevent hearing loss:

• If you can hear sound coming from your child’s headphones while he or she is wearing them, the volume is too loud.
• Follow the “60/60 rule,” which means using only 60 percent of the device’s volume level for no more than 60 minutes at a time. After 60 minutes, give your ears a break for at least an hour.
• Invest in high-quality, “noise cancelling” headphones that cover the entire ear. Ear buds allow more background noise to seep in, so children often turn up the volume to compensate.
• Use hearing protection such as custom-made ear plugs. These can be used while playing music, attending concerts or in other loud environments like movie theaters and firework shows.
• Set volume restrictions on your child’s personal electronic devices.

We’re in the homestretch of what has been one of the hottest summers on record in the U.S., and insects are thriving in the heat.  It’s more important than ever to protect children from active mosquitoes and ticks.

Cases of West Nile virus are back in the national news (Vanderbilt’s Dr. Schaffner weighed-in on the issue last week).  Plus, a mild winter and an early spring have created a haven for ticks in Tennessee.  Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt is seeing an increase in cases of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and other tick-borne illnesses. If left untreated, children can become seriously ill.

Here are a few simple tips to help parents prevent insect-borne illnesses and infections:

• Perform daily tick checks on children. If found, remove the tick immediately and make sure no remaining parts are left in the skin.
• Eliminate standing water near your home — bird baths, gutters and children’s toys can become breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
• Watch for symptoms of insect-borne illnesses — headache, fever, nausea, rash or sensitivity to light. Seek medical attention if symptoms are present.
• If possible, dress children in pants and long-sleeved shirts. Tuck pant legs in socks to keep insects away from legs.
• Apply EPA-approved repellents, making sure to follow recommendations for use on children.  Repellents containing DEET are very effective if applied properly.
• Avoid being outdoors at dusk or dawn.  Powerful oscillating fans can disrupt flight patterns of mosquitoes and can be very useful in outdoor areas of your home.

Visit Children’s Hospital’s website for more information on treating bug bites and stings or properly removing ticks.

photo by John Pope, M.D.

With temperatures in Tennessee climbing…and climbing… it’s no doubt that families will flock to pools and lakes to get some relief.

And when the heat is on, Children’s Hospital sees an increase in drowning or near-drowning incidents.  From 2005-2010, 18 children lost their lives from water-related accidents.

Sadly, almost all of these cases were preventable.

This summer, Children’s Hospital and its community partners have launched a proactive water safety campaign, “Be Pool Cool and Water Wise Middle Tennessee,” posting more than 1,100 educational posters at public pools and marinas in and around Nashville.

The marquee message:  watch your child at all times.  No cell phones, no books, no distractions.  Drowning doesn’t happen like you see in the movies. It’s silent and it’s quick.

By following a few simple precautions laid out in the campaign, parents and caregivers can help prevent these devastating injuries and deaths.

Other water safety tips include:

• Create barriers such as fences, gates and door locks around home pools.
• Teach your child to swim.  By doing so, you are providing him or her with lifelong basic survival skills.
• Prepare for an emergency by learning CPR, mapping out a rescue plan and having a phone near the pool.

U.S. News and World Report has named the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt among the nation’s leaders in pediatric health care.

The hospital achieved national rankings for a maximum of 10 out of 10 pediatric specialty programs considered for the magazine’s annual Best Children’s Hospitals list released today.

The U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals rankings for 2012-2013 recognize top performers among the nation’s 178 designated pediatric hospitals. The Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt has been ranked every year by U.S. News since the inception of the publication’s pediatric rankings, now in their sixth year.

Children’s Hospital continues to be a national leader in Urology, which remains in the top 10, ranking 8^th. The Division of Neonatology also moved into the top 10, improving from 11th to 9th in the country. A substantial improvement was also seen in Pulmonology, moving from 36th to 21st, and in Diabetes and Endocrinology, which climbed from 25th to 18th. Other specialties ranked this year include: Cancer- 45, Cardiology and Heart Surgery- 21, Gastroenterology- 42, Nephrology- 44, Neurology and Neurosurgery- 41, and Orthopaedics- 30.

U.S. News rankings are calculated using clinical outcomes, reputation and other care-related data, including survival rates, nurse staffing, and subspecialist availability, among other factors. The rankings also consider pediatric specialists’ recommendations for hospitals where they would send the sickest pediatric patients.

This year’s full rankings are available online at usnews.com/childrenshospitals, and they will also appear in the Best Hospitals 2013 guidebook in August, which is published by U.S. News.

If you want your child to be more active, take another look at her after-school playmates.

That’s the conclusion of a study published recently in the medical journal Pediatrics. The study, led by Vanderbilt University researcher Sabina Gesell, Ph.D., looked at the group effect of peers on the physical activity of children between ages 5 and 12 in after-school programs. The results have interesting implications for childhood obesity.

“We found that children in this age group are six times more likely to do what their friends do regarding activity levels,” Gessell says. “In fact, a group of four to five peers has a significant influence on any individual child regardless of their usual activity level.”

During the study, researchers observed 80 children in 12-week after-school programs. The children could interact with different peer groups during the day. Participants wore a pager-like device called an accelerometer, which measures physical activity intensity over time. The children were observed and were asked to list the friends they “hung out with” the most.

More active groups tended to draw a child into greater physical activity, while groups that tended toward sedentary activities brought an individual child’s physical activity down.

“Average physical activity level of the group is what influences an individual child,” Gessell said. “Children are constantly adjusting their activity levels to match the peer group.”

The researchers also examined whether children tended to select groups based on activity level, perhaps choosing peers whose levels were similar to their own. Surprisingly, they found no such association. Children might choose friends with other similarities, but physical activity levels did not seem to be a factor.

Gesell said this is exciting because it may offer a new tool to reduce childhood obesity. Adjusting the makeup of playgroups to place students with or at risk for childhood obesity into groups with an activity level that is higher than their own is likely to influence them to be more active.

“If you look at childhood obesity across the country, many efforts have failed to look at social context,” Gesell said, adding that it important to take all factors into account for maximum impact.