High-injury sport

It's not all handsprings, cartwheels and round-offs. It's also sprains, dislocations and fractures.

Gymnastics, a new study finds, can take a heavy toll on its young practitioners' bodies.

"We found that gymnastics has one of the highest injury rates of all sports," said one of the researchers, Lara McKenzie of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Writing in the current Pediatrics, researchers said there were more than 25,000 gymnastic injuries each year in the United States, though the rate was dropping. The lead author is Shubha Singh of Ohio State University.

The researchers looked at injuries involving children 6 to 17 over a 16-year period. They found that most injuries occurred in the upper extremities, with the lower extremities and head and neck following right behind.

It was not always clear which moves were being done when the children were injured, but common culprits were handsprings, flips and cartwheels or round-offs. However painful they may look, splits did not cause a lot of casualties.

One problem, the researchers said, is that unlike football players, for example, gymnasts are not taught to fall properly.

They called for the establishment of uniform rules for gymnasts, coaches and spotters.