Encouraging the use of cooker guards to prevent burns in children

Conclusion: No / inconclusive evidence found to make an evidence statement; effect unknown

No studies were found that assess the effectiveness of encouraging the use of cooker guards (this statement is about 'cooker' or 'hob' guards, a guard that fits across the front of the cooker/ stove/ hob and prevents children form reaching up and touching hot areas or pulling down saucepans containing hot liquids).

Recommendations (for research & practice)

In a study by the Consumer Safety Insitute (M. van de Waeter, 1996) the use of cooker guards has been called "advisable but less essential, because accidents that could have been prevented by this product occurred relatively seldom and generally were not serious." Furthermore the article states that "the use of child safety products is particularly essential for one- and two-year-olds, since they are very often involved in accidents that could have been prevented by child safety products."

Review
Date: 27/10/2011
Version: 1.1
Status: Publish

Procedure
Articles (reviews) and reports were included that were published between 1980 and 2010, in English and Dutch. The outcomes of the study were reviewed by the Dutch Consumer Safety Institute.

Strategy: An online literature search was performed by a researcher of the Consumer Safety Institute and after this a more thorough search was performed by the documentation centre of CSI (Catalog CenV, Pubmed, Injury lit, Google, Websites, 'Grey' literature). Results of each search were compared on differences and potential missed studies were added. First the titles and then abstracts were scanned in order to include relevant studies. In the case of insufficient information obtained from abstracts the full text articles were obtained. Relevant articles were scrutinized and background documents were created. In addition, relevant references of included articles were checked on new and relevant articles (i.e., snowball search).

The outcomes of the study were reviewed by an expert in the field of child safety in the summer of 2010.

Background document

Priorities in child safety products (version 1.1)
Margriet van de Waeter (1996)