Stocking hangers have become popular as a way to hang those well-loved holiday stockings without drilling holes or using other hardware in you home. These heavily weighted ornaments come in all shapes and sizes: stars, penguins, reindeer, you name it.

However, the stockings that hang from them are very attractive to children, with their bright colors, bells and bows. Within one hour of a Florida mother hanging a stocking on a star shaped hanger, her 18-month-old son pulled on the stocking causing the heavy hanger to fall off the mantel and strike him right between the eyes. Luckily his father was a plastic surgeon with some surgical supplies at home. He patched the boy up on the spot.

Not every child has been so lucky. Another suffered a deep puncture wound to the forehead and another child’s toe was crushed from these heavy stocking hangers. No deaths have been reported yet, but one child began vomiting (a symptom of brain trauma) after a stocking hanger fell on his head. He suffered no permanent injury.

Most of the injuries children suffer from falling stocking hangers probably hurt the parents more than the children. The vomiting boy’s mother said she was sick to her stomach with worry as she rushed her boy to the emergency room. For that reason alone, I’d keep my hangers packed and save them for later years.

Dads have to be careful too during the holidays. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that 13,000 Americans suffer holiday decoration related injuries that require emergency room treatment. Whether it’s falling from a ladder or a staple gun accident, the holidays are not a time to throw caution to the wind.

When you’re cutting through packaging, slow down. Also Make sure your candles are in safe places. Both these situations have caused injuries in holidays past. Make your holiday a merry one. Play it safe.

A new study found that 20-25 percent of American children who suffer head injuries receive unnecessary CAT scans. For children with non-severe head injuries who receive a CAT scan, the risk that they will develop brain cancer from the CAT scan radiation exposure is greater than their risk of serious brain trauma.

Cancer is now the most common disease cause of death in children under the age of 10. Although brain cancer itself is relatively uncommon, brain cancer and leukemia are the most prevalent forms of cancer in children under 10. Therefore, radiation exposure to the brain of developing children is of particular concern.

The study examined 42,000 cases of child head injuries. With such a large sample size, scientists say the study’s results are considered very solid. This is important because CAT scan overuse for child head injuries has been suspected for years, but no study until now has been sufficiently conducted or large enough to be considered accurate.

Researchers found that of all cases studied, that only 1 percent (376) were considered serious traumatic brain injuries, and that only 60 of those required brain surgery. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that about 435,000 children are examined for traumatic brain injury. Not all children who suffer head injuries develop traumatic brain injuries. Many are “mild” injuries characterized by only a brief loss of consciousness, if any. These non-serious injuries are the type that do not require CAT scans.

To help determine which children with head injuries should receive a CAT scan and which should not, researchers created guidelines for medical providers and doctors to follow. One set of guidelines exists for children younger than 2 and another for children 2 and older. Those younger than 2 cannot communicate as well as older children so we must look for different signs in them. In addition, younger children are more sensitive to radiation.

Children younger than 2 should not receive CAT scans following head injuries if they exhibit a normal mental status, normal behavior, and have no swelling except for the front of their head, have not lost consciousness for more than five seconds, have no noticeable skull fracture and were injured in a non-severe way.

The signs are similar for children 2 and older. However, they can report the presence of a headache. If no headache is reported and all the signs for younger children check out, a child with a head injury who is 2 or older should not receive a CAT scan.

The cooling method has been used successfully since the 1950s in to reduce damage to the brain and other organs caused by heart attacks. More recently it has been used on neurological patients, and about two years ago, doctors began treating newborn infants who have suffered brain injuries.

Babies can suffer brain damage during childbirth for any number of reasons but it almost always stems from a lack of oxygen to the brain. Often, the child does not get enough oxygen because the umbilical cord becomes pinched.

Every year, about 2 to 4 of every 1,000 babies suffer oxygen deprivation at birth. However, doctors will not currently treat their brain injuries with hypothermia therapy unless the infants have reached 36 weeks gestation because premature babies are too fragile for the procedure.

The treatment reduces the infant’s body temperature to 92 degrees. After doctors feel the appropriate amount of time has passed, they gradually warm the infant to a normal body temperature over the course of six hours. As of yet, there are no significant, known side effects to infant cooling.

One hospital has used the therapy on eight oxygen deprived babies to date and only one has died. That infant died not from the cooling itself, but because his birth injuries were so severe. Of course, the full measure of the children’s brain injuries cannot be known until they grow out of the newborn phase.

MRIs can reveal some damage, but not the full extent. Some of the babies who have been treated so far have partial brain injury, and some do not.

The treatment works because cooling reduces swelling, slowing the injury and preventing a cascade of events that causes cell death. The technique saved the life of a newborn that had too little oxygen for almost 15 minutes. That is almost three times longer than it takes for brain damage to occur.

In 2005, an 18-year-old who was cooled amazingly maintained normal brain function after he lost his leg in a boating accident and his heart stopped for 45 minutes.