Football is the sport most likely to send your kid to the ER

(Image credit: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

published 15 November 2019

Football is the sport that most frequently sends kids to the ER with injuries, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics found.

The report, published Friday in National Health Statistics Reports, found that between 2010 and 2016, there were about 2.7 million emergency room visits each year for sports injuries among people aged 5-24. Football was found responsible for the largest share of injuries, making up 14.1 percent of the visits, followed by basketball, pedal cycling, soccer, ice skating, roller skating, and skateboarding.

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Dennis Cardone, a sports medicine specialist and co-director of the Center for Young Athletes at NYU Langone Sports Health in New York, explained the results on CNN and said, "as someone sticks to one sport, they're certainly at risk of injury." To reduce the risk of sports injuries, he advised coaches to "remember to follow guidelines" and parents to "encourage their children to enjoy a more wide variety of activities instead of specializing in just one sport."

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Ramisa Rob is a web intern at The Week. She is also an investigative reporting fellow at Brian Ross Investigates, and has previously worked for the The Daily Star. A recent graduate of the University of Michigan, she is currently pursuing her Masters at NYU Tisch.

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