Dancing is a wonderful artistic expression and kids have taken
to tapping, pirouetting, Irish stepping and even ballroom
dancing across the country. While it can be fun and great
exercise, lots of these kids are being seriously injured.
Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital looked at a
national database of emergency-department visits. What they
found was that the most common dance-related injuries were
sprains, strains and injuries from falls. The patients were
between 15 and 19 years old. The researchers said no one on the
team is calling for parents to pull their children from dance
classes, but that the results from their study suggests that
instructors should look for ways to prevent injury in students
who participate in the physically demanding activity. About
113,100 children and teens were treated for dance injuries in
U.S. emergency departments between 1991 and 2007, according to
the research teams estimates. During that time, the number of
cases in a year increased by more than 37 percent, to