Parents always worry about their kids – especially boys – getting sick or being injured, but what are the real reasons that parents bring their boys into the emergency room? Every year, the CDC publishes an annual report called the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, one of its National Health Statistics Reports. The data in this report include information on emergency room (ER) visits based on age and gender. The following is a list of the top 10 reasons that boys aged 14 and under visited the ER in the year 2006, the year for which the most recent data are available. After each reason, the number of visits appears in parentheses followed by the percentage that number represents out of all ER visits by this age group.

Boys under 15 make up more than half of the ER visits for this age group: overall, males aged 14 and under made 11,548,000 visits to the ER in 2006, representing 52.8% of all ER visits for this age group. For the 15 and older age group, ER visits by females vastly outnumber those by men.

The top 10 reasons for ER visits among boys under 15 for 2006 are:

1. Fever (1,659,000 visits, 7.6%)
2. Cough (828,000 visits, 3.8%)
3. Vomiting (611,000 visits, 2.8%)
4. Unspecified injuries to the head, neck, and face (368,000 visits, 1.7%)
5. Facial area symptoms (352,000 visits, 1.6%)
6. Ear ache or ear infection (347,000 visits, 1.6%)
8. Stomach and abdominal pain or cramps (277,000 visits, 1.35)
9. Throat symptoms (239,000 visits, 1.1%)
10. Difficulty breathing (dyspnea; 203,000 visits, 0.9%)

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Related blog posts:

  - Top 10 Reasons for ER Visits Among Males 15 and Older

  - Top 10 Reasons for ER Visits Among Females 15 and Older

_{Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DHHS Publication No. (PHS) 2008–1250, August 2008. National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2006 Emergency Department Summary, National Health Statistics Report No. 7}

_{Photo: Matthew Oliphant, Flickr, Creative Commons}