Sports injuries are very common for kids. Nurse Mark returns to The Lab to let parents know how to recognize sports related injuries and when to take your child in for a doctor visit. Learn what kinds of injuries to watch for in youth sports like soccer, baseball, swimming and gymnastics. What medical symptoms are common with a head injury? Check out this video for info on sprains, strains, and fractures. DadLabs ep. 41 The Lab.

Clay: We here at the DadLabs. We're big sports fans. Our kids are among the 30-35 million American children that participate in organized sports. We really like them. Unfortunately, with sports, they're gonna come some injuries. The CDC reports that 3.5 million kids under the age of 14 require medical treatment as a result of sports injuries. Now over half of those result from unsupervised activities like bike riding but still, there's a lot of injuries that are happening out there. So as parents, dads, we're on the sidelines, we need to be prepared in case our kid gets hurt. And we need to know how to act. So, we've brought in Nurse Mark. We pulled him out of the ER. I hope there's somebody there taking your place.
Mark: I hope there is too Clay.
Clay: Pulled Nurse Mark out of the ER to come talk to us about sports injuries. Mark, as a former coach, you know all about these things. Tell us, what do we need to know about sports injuries on the sidelines?
Mark: Well, the most common sports injuries that we're gonna see are gonna be sprains and strains and possible broken bones and bruises. So we see those a lot, so we have to know how to deal with them.
Clay: So how do you know? Kid falls down, maybe twists his ankle a little bit. Happens all the time on a basketball court, soccer field. When do we need to go into the doctor's office?
Mark: Well Clay that's a great question. And the answer to that really you can't tell if it's a break or a sprain until you get an x-ray. So how do I know when I'm thinking it's bad enough to get an x-ray? Well, if we see any discoloration or we see any deformity, swelling, pain on palpation, so if you touch the are and it's very painful, that's a good indication you might have a break and you're gonna want to bring them in.
Clay: So, we hear a lot about these stress injuries or repeat use injuries that they're really on the rise. What's that all about?
Mark: Well that's the greatest increase in activity in pediatrician's offices are seeing these types of injuries.
Clay: People are taking their 8 year olds and they're doing nothing but throwing a baseball from the fall to the summer all year long. Is that what's causing these injuries?
Mark: Well not really.
Clay: Has everybody gone nuts? Is that what these injuries are all about?
Mark: No, it's not that overzealous dad that wants the next Roger Clemens to be their kid. Really what it's a result of is repetitive action without much warmup or without any proper training. So often you see a kid just joined a team and they start practicing three or four times a week. And after a month or two of that, their ankles are sore if they're doing soccer. They're running. Their elbows are sore if they're playing baseball. If they're swimming, it's their shoulders. Gymnastics, it's gonna be their hands or their wrists. And so in those cases, you just want to start slowly. You don't want to practice 3 to 5 times a week. And most importantly, if your child is complaining about it hurting, let them rest. Let them take some time off.
Clay: So you've got a minor injury. How do we treat these minor injuries?
Mark: Well Clay that's another good question. We use the acronym RICE to help us remember how we're gonna treat these as home.
Clay: So if a kid's hurt, you feed them rice?
Mark: No you remember RICE because it's easy to remember. And we use that acronym to remember Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. So rest, you just don't want them to be on that injured area. You don't want them to use it. If it's an arm, that's pretty easy to do. Just say do everything left handed if it's the right wrist that hurts. If it's a lower, a knee or an ankle or a foot, you want to try to stay off that. So that's rest. Ice, you want to put ice for 20 minutes at a time. And you want to do that every couple of hours for the first two days. After 48 hours, the ice is not effective.
Clay: That's a tough one. My kids, the young kids particularly, they won't hold still for that ice. It's too cold.
Mark: Well what you want to do is just tell them it's only gonna be 20 minutes. Put it on with some elastic wrap. Keep it there. They can watch TV. The elevation part of RICE, you want to keep it elevated so that all the white blood cells and all the blood that's rushing down to that area that's helping produce that pain is gonna be going the opposite way with gravity. What you see in front of me here are some compression devices that we'd give in the hospital. Simply, we could use tape or elastic wrap but we also have some of these more formal devices that are gonna allow compression to keep that area from being swollen, being painful.
Clay: Okay so we've got fractures, strains. What are the other sports related injuries that we should be concerned about that cause you concern in the ER?
Mark: Well the thing that you worry the most about that could be catastrophic is a head injury.
Clay: So how do we decide? Happens all the time on the field. Somebody's bonking heads, somebody's falling down. How do we decide we're gonna go to the hospital with an injury that's to the head?
Mark: Well the most important thing was any level of consciousness changes. Did the child lost consciousness? Did they black out? Do they have any amnesia? Can they not remember what happened? Clay, anytime, any of those symptoms, you immediately go to the hospital.
Clay: How about if you just got a really dumb kid? How do you tell? Like really stupid to begin with.
Mark: Maybe that's a different conversation.
Clay: Also you need to watch our for if somebody gets sick. A kid is throwing up.
Mark: Right so obviously any loss of consciousness that's big. But if you find that your child is not behaving normally, if their baseline is not being met, ask some simple questions. If you're dealing with a young child, give me the days of the week. If you know they can do it and they can't after a head injury, that's symptomatic. Also we worry about vision changes if they start seeing spots, any kind of blacking out, that type of thing. And if they get sick, if they're vomiting, nauseous, that's indicative of a head injury?
Clay: How about a headache? Kids complain about a headache that evening. Is that something to worry about?
Mark: No a headache is gonna be pretty normal. Actually there are a lot of reasons why that young athlete might have a headache including dehydration. if the headache is bad enough that it bothers them, then that's bad enough for you to see a doctor.
Clay: The other thing I hear is with a head injury, you need to wake that kid up and check them every couple of hours. So let's say that two kids bonk their heads. It doesn't seem like you need to take them to the hospital, maybe he's got a little bit of a headache. Do I need to wake that kid up every 2 hours and check him?
Mark: No you don't. So if you've watched them closely and they don't have any of the other symptoms that I've mentioned, the nausea, the vomiting, the level of consciousness changes. They're alert, they're oriented, they're able to do the things they normally do and they have a little headache, no we don't need to take those children up at night. And the bottom line is Clay, concussions are fairly common in sports. And what we worry about is if they actually have a brain bleed. And the only way to diagnose that is to have a cat scan. And you can't do that at most local doctor's offices. You've got to bring them to an emergency room to get that taken care of.
Clay: So we've learned a lot about head injuries, and sprains and strains. Thanks a lot for coming in and giving us the information on these sports injuries. We love sports. Keep playing out there. But keep those kids safe. Thanks a lot.