The world of industrial design doesn’t always take into consideration the health and safety of our senior citizens. For example, did you know that annually over 2,600 US senior citizens sustain serious elevator-related injuries? In a report in the January issue of the Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection and Critical Care researchers found that three-quarters of the injured seniors were women, more than half of the injuries were due to trips and falls, and one-third were as a result of elevator doors closing on the injured party. Senior citizens are more prone to elevator injuries due to decreased vision, balance problems, and their use of walking aids, which can impede ambulation. Study author Greg Steele is also advocating the elevator industry to implement larger elevator open buttons. “Elevator open buttons should be made twice the size of the other elevator buttons so they are not hard to find by passengers who want to stop the door from closing on an approaching individual,” Steele said. “This would be very inexpensive to change because electronics don’t have to be altered, just the button. Certainly all newly installed or updated elevators should have such buttons.” [via Health Day]
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Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.