- Younger children are at greater risk of serious harm and injury, researchers warn
An 11-month-old baby suffered a “serious injury” to his foot after being hit by a lawnmower in Austria.
Dr Johannes Schalamon said the boy had been admitted to the clinic in Klagenfurt, southern Austria, over the weekend following the horrific accident.
“The boy was crawling in the garden when he was hit by the robotic lawnmower and suffered a serious injury to his foot,” he said.
Schalamon told local media that the boy had to undergo surgery for two hours but will still need follow-up.
He warned that every year two or three young children have to be treated in his department of the training hospital, the third largest in Austria, after lawnmower-related incidents, and that the most terrible injuries sometimes tragically end in amputations.
Archive photo. Boy suffers horrific injuries after being run over by robotic lawnmower
Doctors at Klagenfurt hospital (pictured) call for greater awareness of the risks of lawnmowers
Schalamon did not confirm the nature or extent of the boy’s injuries, or whether they would require amputation.
But pediatric and adolescent surgeons at the Klagenfurt Clinic warned that children remained at risk of injury given the growing popularity of “robotic” lawnmowers.
Last year, an eight-year-old girl from Ammanford, south-east Wales, made headlines when she was chosen to represent her country in a dance show in the United States after losing a leg in a freak lawnmower accident. .
Alys Davies returned to action just ten weeks after requiring a below-knee amputation.
He was fitted with a prosthetic leg and participated in a competition in the US three months after the accident, which surprised doctors.
Alys was playing in the garden with her sister when her leg got caught in her father’s lawnmower, tearing the skin off her lower leg.
She said: “I was filming my sister and then the lawnmower came, I stepped back and the lawnmower grabbed my leg and then peeled the skin off.
“I had a shock and I didn’t think I would be able to do the things I used to do before the accident.”
Alys was able to get back into shape with a specialist knife made available by the Welsh Specialist Health Services Committee, NHS Wales and funding from the Welsh Government.
A sympathetic review of lawnmower-related injuries published in 2021 came to the frightening conclusion that the global incidence of accidents was increasing.
“Such injuries tend to be devastating and limb-threatening,” the authors noted.
The study examined 142 young patients over a 25-year period, recording an average age of just seven and a half years.
Of all patients, nearly 70 percent suffered an open fracture and nearly 40 percent required amputation.
Younger patients were also at higher risk for wrist or ankle amputations than older patients.
The authors said broader public education about the dangers of lawnmower-related accidents was “essential” to stem the growing trend.
Archive photo. Klagenfurt, in southern Austria, is home to the country’s third largest hospital.
Archive photo. Researchers who study childhood injuries say younger children are at higher risk of harm
A separate study of 1,302 lawn mower injuries in children ages one to 18 between 2005 and 2017 found that children in rural areas were at higher risk for injuries.
The study also found that injuries were more severe, on average, required hospitalization at a higher rate, and had additional complications from infection.
“While devastating, these accidents are largely preventable,” write the study’s lead author, Dr. Theodore Ganley, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and his colleagues.
With almost half of the children between one and five years old, the researchers concluded that “these accidents occurred due to a lack of supervision or parental error involving children/infants who had not yet developed the judgment and ability to avoid and recognize the dangers of lawn mowers. ‘.
American children suffer an estimated 9,400 lawnmower injuries each year, researchers report in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.