The Department of Transportation has announced plans to introduce legislation this fall to reduce speed limits in school zones from 50 km/h to 30 km/h.
The goal of the new limits is to protect students and make roads safer.
Bill Estabrooks, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal stated:
75% of burns and scalding injuries happen in the home. Water doesn’t have to be boiling (100 degrees C) to be a serious danger. At a temperature of 68 degrees Celsius water can cause third degree burns in less than one second!
“What’s a Third Degree Burn?”
Third degree burns happen when all three layers of the skin are destroyed. Third degree burns require immediate medical attention. Treatment and recuperation requires skin grafts and can require months of painful rehabilitation.
A study of children with minor head trauma at Boston Children’s Hospital suggests CT scans may not be necessary when diagnosing children who have suffered head trauma.
The study indicates that the use of a CT scan can be reduced by up to 50% without compromising care simply by observing children. This is a positive finding because reducing CT Scans reduces children’s exposure to unnecessary radiation.
The June issue of Pediatrics Journal contains the results of a study lead by Boston Children’s Hospital and the Department of Emergency Medicine at UC Davis. One of the co-authors of the study Lise Nigrovic stated:
“Only a small percentage of children with blunt head trauma really have something serious going on. If you can be watched in the ED for a few hours, you may not need a CT”.
The study reviewed the results of more than 40,000 children who had been admitted to emergency departments with blunt head trauma. Some of the children had CT scans ordered immediately. Others were observed before a decision was made about the use of a CT scan.
The latest edition of Pediatrics Journal contained a study published by the University Hospital Medical Centre in Cleveland Ohio which shows that 9% of babies are being given a wide variety of herbal supplements. The study states that this is a concern because some of the herbs may pose health risks to babies.
Unregulated
The problem arises because herbal supplements are not regulated the same way as drugs and pharmaceuticals. The herbal remedies may cause adverse drug reactions and may be contaminated.
The Ontario Court of Appeal recently released its reasons in Degennaro v. Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. The Court of Appeal confirmed a $3 million compensation award for chronic pain stemming from a slip and fall injury.
As far as I can tell, the decision is the largest compensatory damage award from chronic pain in Canada.
Diane Degennaro was visiting her son who was a patient at the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. A nurse at the hospital offered Ms. Degennaro a bed to sleep in while she was staying with her son. When Ms. Degennaro sat on the bed it collapsed and she fractured her sacrum (the pointed bone at the base of the spine).
The $2,500.00 cap on so called “minor injuries” that was introduced in Nova Scotia in 2003 is still having ramifications to innocent victims 7 years later.
The recent decision of Awalt v. Blanchard is a case in point.
Linda Awalt is a 52 year old personal care worker who was injured in a car accident in September 2004.
This is interesting. The Globe and Mail has reported that researchers have discovered that women are more susceptible to sports related concussions than men.
The problem is that most “return to play”criteria are based on research on male athletes. This may result in injured female athletes being returned to play before they are fully recovered, resulting in a greater chance of multiple concussions and long term brain damage.
Thanks to my colleague Bruce Stern for the heads up on the article.
Insurers Using Social Media
There was an interesting article in Lawyers Weekly pointing to developments in the United States where insurance companies are using information collected from public social media sites such as Facebook, My Space and Twitter to conduct risk assessments when underwriting insurance policies.
The article indicates that Canadian insurance companies are watching the developments “very closely” according to Mark Kline, a spokesman for the Insurance Bureau of Canada. According to Kline:
Expert evidence forms the core of any personal injury claim. In almost every personal injury case the plaintiff must provide scientific evidence, usually if the form of testimony from teatingg doctors and other health care providers about issues surrounding causation of the plaintiff’s injuries.
Personal injury claims often boil don to a so-called “battle of the experts” and the judge or jury is forced to decide which evidence they feel is more reliable or reasonable.
Interpreting Scientific Evidence Challenging
Car accidents are the leading cause of death for children age 4 and up. Child car seats have been shown to lower the chances of death in a car accident by 28 per cent compared with seatbelts. They have also been found to reduce the severity of car crash injuries.
Most child car seat manufactures recommend that children stay in rear facing seats until they are 1 year old or 9 kilos as a guideline, before being placed in forward facing seats.
Rear Facing Seats Safer
But after reviewing data from injuries due to car crashes over several years that shows that children in rear-facing car seats are more likely to surivive, the American Academy of Pediatrics and U.S. traffic safety officials have teamed up to release new guidelines that recommend toddlers should sit in rear-facing car seats until age two. If a child under the age of two outgrows the weight limits for their infant car seat, they should be moved to a rear-facing convertible car seat and kept in that position until age two.
