Urged in a 2013 petition by Public Citizen and other advocates, including Black, to ban bed rails, the federal agencies that oversee the products have instead focused on recalls and producing voluntary standards to improve their safety. Inclined sleepers and crib bumper pads, which are linked to numerous infant deaths from asphyxiation, would also be banned under the Safe Sleep for Babies Act passed by the House last month, and a bipartisan version has been introduced in the Senate.īut a decades-old effort to prevent similar hazards for elderly and disabled Americans has largely fizzled. The CPSC recently announced new safety standards to effectively eliminate inclined sleepers for babies under five months old. The FDA and the CPSC did not respond to requests for comment. "There is no way to design them to make them safe because entrapment can occur." Michael Carome, director of health research at Public Citizen. "They are all unsafe: Whether it's a bed rail placed on the side of a bed to protect an adult or a child from falling out of the bed, or to help them position themselves, to help get in and out of bed, they are too dangerous," said Dr. The trouble is likely understated as bed rails are not necessarily listed as the cause of death by nursing homes and coroners, or as the cause of injury by emergency room doctors. Most involve entrapment and falls, with deaths and serious injuries possible even when the products are properly designed, compatible with the bed and mattress, and used appropriately, the agency said. The agencies "have received many death and injury reports related to both adult portable bed rail products and hospital bed rails," the FDA states on its website. Portable rails may be regulated either by the FDA as a medical product or by the CPSC as a consumer product, depending on the intended use. "The question of whether the current products available on the market in 2020 substantially comply with the voluntary standard has yet to be determined," added the agency in the report, which estimates that between 90,000 and 425,000 adult portable bedrails are sold annually. Among those incidents, 260 cases involved adult portable bed rails, including 247 fatalities, according to a July 2020 CPSC briefing paper. hospital emergency rooms for rail-related injuries from 2003 to 2019, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Although details are inconclusive, one 2016 case reported to the FDA described a patient who died and who was found with "her head lodged in the bed side rail, and the rest of her body on the floor."Īn estimated 69,000 adults were treated in U.S. More recent examples of incidents involving bed rails can be found by searching the FDA's site.
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