PEDIATRICS Vol. 105 No. 5 May 2000, pp. 1174-1175
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To the Editor.
This letter is in response to an article entitled "Monkeybar Injuries: Complications of Play" by Waltzman et al that appeared in your May 1999 issue of Pediatrics. While we applaud the alert given to the medical community concerning injuries that occur on the playground, we would like to point out some unsubstantiated conclusions drawn by the authors concerning surfacing and supervision on playgrounds. Left unchallenged, these misleading statements will serve to hurt more children than help prevent serious injuries.
Specifically we find problems with the study in relation to the definition of equipment under investigation, the inclusion of inappropriate surfaces as acceptable baseline data, and the lack of clear substantiation of data in the area of supervision. These items are spelled out more completely in the following narrative.