[Rollerblading and skateboarding injuries among children in Bergen]

The popularity of rollerblading and skateboarding activities in Norway is reflected in the number of injuries seen at our casualty centres and hospitals.

During 1998, we made a prospective registration of 7,041 new injuries involving children below the age of 16 treated at the Accident and Emergency Department and at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen.

Rollerblading and skateboarding injuries accounted for 113 cases, representing 1.6% of all injuries. Three quarters were boys, nine out of ten were 10 to 15-year-olds, and arms/hands were injured in two thirds of the cases. Almost two thirds of the injuries were fractures (n = 67), representing a higher fraction than seen in other activities. Most of them were distal radial fractures (n = 39), but scaphoid fractures, an otherwise seldom child fracture, were seen in one tenth (n = 6) of all fractures.

Scaphoid fractures can, when untreated, cause pseudarthrosis; this should be borne in mind when treating children with hand pain after fall on their rollerblades or skateboards. As fractures of the hand root and wrist accounted for 40% of all injuries, hand and wrist protection seem to be the best preventive measure in terms of number of injuries.