{"id":2337,"date":"2012-11-19T05:14:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T18:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/inthenews\/?p=2337"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:46:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T03:46:29","slug":"surgeons-make-ride-on-lawn-mowers-no-go-zones-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/surgeons-make-ride-on-lawn-mowers-no-go-zones-for-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Surgeons: make ride-on lawn mowers \u2018no go\u2019 zones for kids"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Five-year-old Joel McLean shows RCH plastic surgeon Associate Professor Bruce Johnstone how lucky he is to\u00a0have the\u00a0use of his left arm, after it was nearly severed in a ride-on lawn mower injury.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Surgeons at The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital (RCH) have called for behavioural change and stricter consumer controls to protect children from potentially horrific injuries as a result of ride-on lawn mower misuse.<\/p>\n

RCH plastic surgeon Associate Professor Bruce Johnstone said the campaign was a response to a gradual increase in the number of children being critically hurt by ride-on mowers, and fears that injuries would continue to escalate as the machines became a more common and affordable consumer item.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last 12 months we\u2019ve operated on five children who\u2019ve been critically injured after falling from, or falling behind a ride-on mower,\u201d A\/Professor Johnstone said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are horrific injuries, often requiring amputations of limbs and extensive skin grafts, and the victims are typically boys aged about four-years who face ongoing surgery and problems into early adulthood.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople must remember that ride-on mowers are not recreational vehicles and should never be considered a \u2018ride\u2019 for children. Ride-on mowers are dangerous pieces of equipment and the blades can cause considerable, life-altering injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want parents and families to treat any area in which one of these machines is being used as a no-go zone for their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\/Professor Johnstone and a team from the RCH is also liaising with industry, the ACCC and other regulatory bodies to see if there is room to strengthen consumer controls and standards on ride-on lawn mowers.<\/p>\n

A 30-year review of ride-on lawn mower injuries at the RCH published in 2008 confirmed injuries from ride-on mower use were steadily increasing. Surgeons are predicting a further increase to 15 injuries over the next five years \u2013 double the injury rate of 1990\u20131999.<\/p>\n

The common scenarios for ride-on mower injury include:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Small children, commonly four-year-old boys, reversed over by the mower when out of the driver\u2019s line of sight<\/p>\n

\u2022 Children injured by a sibling, who was driving the mower recreationally<\/p>\n

\u2022 Children slipping off the lap of a parent, who was driving the mower.<\/p>\n

Joel McLean, 4 at the time, was flown to the RCH on 26 June last year after being reversed over by a ride-on mower driven by his father on the family\u2019s seven-acre property. The accident occurred in seconds, and left Joel\u2019s forearm almost completely severed.<\/p>\n

Joel required three major operations lasting a total of 14 hours during his first admission over 11 days. The first focused on cleaning the extremely contaminated wounds, removing unsalvageable and dead tissues and pinning his forearm bones. Many important structures including the middle 1\/3 of the ulnar bone were missing.<\/p>\n

The most complex reconstructive procedure occurred on day four and took nine hours. A large area of muscle and skin was transplanted from his back to fill the massive forearm defect and brought in vascularised nerve. This, plus other nerve grafts, were used to reconstruct the ulnar nerve, which is essential for fine hand function. A month later a rib graft was used to bridge the defect in the ulnar bone.<\/p>\n

A\/Professor Johnstone said all of these procedures had been remarkably successful; however, due to the violence of the injury, poor blood supply to the centres of the bones prevented healing of fractures. A further bone plating operation occurred in August of this year.<\/p>\n

Joel\u2019s father, Daniel McLean, recalled the circumstances that led to the horrible incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I was mowing up and down the slope I came back and I felt a big bump, and it wasn\u2019t until I looked down that I noticed Joel was under the mower,\u201d Daniel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shut the mower down straight away. You hear of getting the strength of ten men and you do. I had to pull the mower off and pull him out. There was a lot of blood. It was a very traumatic experience. My other boy Keith saw the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those things, I had mowed the lawn hundreds of times and I thought the boys were inside,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Joel\u2019s mother Tammy McLean remembers the incident all too well, and says she and husband Daniel worked quickly to take Joel to hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard Daniel yelling and ran around the corner of the house to see him holding Joel\u2019s arm together,\u201d Tammy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs there was too much blood, we knew we couldn\u2019t wait for an ambulance and drove straight to Albury Base Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not think he would still have an arm, but hoped he would still have a leg,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Joel has had at least six operations at the RCH to repair his arm and continues to have regular physiotherapy, hand therapy and hydrotherapy, either at the RCH or with local health providers.<\/p>\n

A\/Professor Johnstone attributes the increase in injuries to a number of factors, including a rise in the number of \u2018hobby\u2019 farms utilising ride-on mowers and the increasing affordability of ride-on mowers. He also says the behaviour of retail staff at the point of sale of these machines is a concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard stories of ride-on mower retailers demonstrating to customers how to disengage safety mechanisms that cause the blades to stop turning when the mower is in reverse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite these trends, the message is clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had to draft legislation, I\u2019d say: \u2018Keep children under the age of 10 out of the same paddock or area as a ride-on mower\u2019,\u201d A\/Professor Johnstone said.<\/p>\n

Tammy McLean says it will be a culture change for some families.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up on a farm and we\u2019d ride tractors and other machines all the time. We think our children know that mowers are dangerous and not to go near them. Make sure children are inside \u2013 kids and mowers don\u2019t mix,\u201d Tammy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ride-on lawn mower injuries are on the rise. RCH surgeons urge families to remember that ride-on mowers are not recreational vehicles, but dangerous pieces of machinery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2337"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4935,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337\/revisions\/4935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}