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Cardiac events during sports are uncommon for anyone, said Dr. Stuart Berger, division head of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. While they can also occur in kids and teens, these injuries can happen whether or not people play sports. While many children can get injured on the field, the numbers are mostly declining – and sports are important for their physical and mental health, doctors say. They explain how to prevent and treat sports injury in kids. How many kids get injured playing sports Overall injuries due to youth participation in football show a dramatic decline since 2013, plateauing in 2020 and heading back up in 2021, according to the most recent figures from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Children should receive an hour of exercise per day. WavebreakMediaMicro/Adobe Stock Convincing your child to leave the screens behind to exercise is hard. Heres how to do it More than a million kids ages 5 to 14 were injured in sports and required a trip to the emergency room, according to the commission. Along with sports like basketball, soccer and football, the agency also reported significant injuries from things like playground equipment and skateboards. Children between the ages of 5 and 14 were most likely to be injured in football in 2021 : There were 110,171 reported injuries in children ages 5 to 14 in 2021, compared to 92,802 in youth and young adults aged 15 to 24. Soccer and basketball were also high risk for kids ’ injuries with 59,000 and 79,207 injuries, respectively. The sports with the highest rates of concussion were : boys ’ football, with 10.4 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures ; girls ’ soccer, with 8.19 per 10,000 athlete exposures ; and boys ’ ice hockey, with 7.69 per 10,000 athlete exposures, according to a 2019 study. High contact sports like hockey, football, lacrosse and martial arts might be higher risk for serious injuries such as head injury, but even seemingly safer sports like swimming and track pose some risk for overuse injuries. And they all can be made safer with the right strategy, said Dr. Erin Grieb, pediatric primary care sports medicine physician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Orthopedic and Sports Stanford Medicine Center. Here’s what to do if your child plays sports. What to look out for When it comes to cardiac events, screening is crucial, Stuart Berger said. Generally, kids are safe to play sports and exercise without concern for cardiac events, but with all types of sports, it is important to do a physical with family history to identify those who might be at risk, he added. ‘ The concerns are that maybe there is somebody with an underlying cardiac abnormality, the screening is designed to bring that out and that we can identify, if possible, who those kids are.