Abstract

Gymnastics and dance are popular, technically demanding activities for children, yet recent national data comparing their injury profiles are scarce. This study described and compared gymnastics- and dance-related emergency department (ED) visits among U.S. children aged 7 to 17 years from 2021 to 2025. We analysed five annual public-use files of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (7,258 sampled visits: 3,851 gymnastics, 3,407 dance), using sampling weights, strata and hospital clusters to produce national estimates with design-based 95% confidence intervals and survey-weighted logistic regression. An estimated 201,886 visits occurred over five years (110,422 gymnastics; 91,464 dance), equivalent to 47.9 and 39.7 visits per 100,000 children per year. Estimated visits rose by about 60% between 2021 and 2025, from a 2021 baseline depressed by pandemic-era disruption; all-cause injury visits in the same age group rose by 37%, and the rise does not imply a corresponding increase in injury risk per participant. Gymnastics visits involved mainly upper-extremity injuries (39.4%) and fractures (27.2%), particularly at ages 7 to 11, whereas dance visits involved mainly lower-extremity injuries (62.1%), especially to the knee and ankle. After adjustment for age, sex and year, gymnastics-related visits had higher odds than dance-related visits of fracture (odds ratio 2.70), upper-extremity injury (3.85) and admission, transfer or observation (2.57); these ratios compare ED cases, not participant risk. Narratives most often described falls, landings and flips in gymnastics and twisting or rolling in dance, and fewer than 3% described gradual-onset symptoms. The patterns suggest candidate prevention priorities for evaluation: safe falling, landing and progression of inverted skills in young gymnasts; knee and ankle control, jump and turn technique and floor conditions in dancers. ED surveillance captures acute hospital-treated injury and should be complemented by exposure-based monitoring of overuse injury.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.